Forecasting Dangers – June 15, 2011

Hi Canie and all,

The following is something regarding circulating earthquake forecast data that I have stated repeatedly in the past.

Each earthquake forecaster must determine how to best circulate his or her own forecast information. And something important that every forecaster needs to take into account is the risk that his or her forecast could cause the people in some city to panic and pack their bags and leave the city.

Quite often as with my most recent Earthquake Warnings and Advisories I have very specific locations for where an earthquake might occur. And in the past some of those location determinations have been extremely accurate.

However, unless a forecaster can state with 100% certainty that a significant earthquake is going to occur at a given location then any public forecast data need to be circulated in such a manner that people who live in any high probability areas do not get unduly alarmed.

For that reason, with my forecast data stored on public forums such as bulletin boards and newsgroups I usually include only enough location information to provide people with a general idea of where they should be looking for other earthquake precursors. For example, I am presently expecting an earthquake in the northwest part of the U.S. And I have stated that it would probably be in some fault zone that is somehow associated with the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.

That is about as specific as I feel it is safe to get regarding that particular location. If I stated that it might affect this city or that one as I actually could, then people living in that city might get panicky.

More exact location data for that expected area has been sent to appropriate U.S. government officials. And from news reports that I have been seeing it appears that they or someone else might have actually circulated that information to government officials in the expected earthquake area who would need to know that an earthquake could be headed their way.

For a person to really understand the importance of this and just how difficult it is to circulate forecasts in a responsible manner he or she needs to actually try doing that himself or herself. Because there is no central international clearinghouse for earthquake forecast data, one of the most difficult steps in this process is simply finding people in a given country who can be safely sent the forecast information. They generally need to be government or disaster mitigation officials who have some type of formal or informal secrecy arrangement that guarantees that they won’t let the forecast data get out into the general public where it can cause serious problems.

And for that reason, for the past few months I have been strongly recommending to earthquake workers and government officials around the world that such a clearinghouse should be created. It could probably be run by some organization such as the U.N. for very little money. There are likely quite a few people around the world including myself who would volunteer to help with the effort for free.

These are personal opinions.