Research related to earthquakes that is based on geology, seismology, and physics need not be expensive. For example, in Haiti there was only a single seismometer, in the entire country, and it did not work correctly, at the time of the January 2010 quake. If there had been a better developed earth science community in Haiti, they could probably have gotten some donated instruments and set up some network. But, OK, as I write this, that would have cost something, but if done right could have provided some local employment. The lack of seismometers until almost a month after the quake lead to a bunch of presentations at a meeting in July that I attended in the Dominican Republic where there was no agreement on what fault the quake was on, or even where the earthquake hazard had increased or decreased along the part of the fault system that broke. Not Good.

In Haiti after the quake, and in southern Sumatra before the quakes, a lot was learned about earthquakes by just studying uplifted corals. You just measure the elevation of the corals. In Sumatra, you saw a slice out of certain coral heads and send a sample off for dating. Kerry Sieh likely used local geologists for that effort in Sumatra.

China in the 1970s made use of the public in shorter term earthquake prediction. Whether those efforts are generally going to be useful is unclear, but abundant foreshocks lead to a success in 1975.

It is a little difficult to give examples of useful short-term prediction efforts that are inexpensive, but it is equally difficult to find examples of such efforts that are expensive, because it is not clear that any efforts work.

Chris