Regional Collaboration in Geo-Observations: a Pathway to Hazard Mitigation
Executive Summary - We propose that the Sixth Summit of the Americas serve as a platform for
launching an initiative in earthquake-hazard mitigation through international cooperation in the
development of enhanced geophysical observatories and associated capacity-building for their operation,
the analysis of shared data, and partnerships in studies to reduce risk from shared exposure to seismic
hazards.
Goals - The various countries of the Americas share common risks from natural hazards,
particularly earthquakes and related phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, soil liquefaction, and
tsunamis. A multi-national initiative to build and sustain geophysical observatories across the Americas
will provide a framework for effective seismic hazard assessment and risk reduction programs.
Investment in technical infrastructure, combined with appropriate education and training programs to
develop a competent technical workforce, will enable sustainability of these observations and of the
associated risk reduction efforts.
Because earthquakes are associated with geological structures that cross national boundaries, their
effective study requires international or regional efforts, alliances and partnerships. These partnerships
include geophysicists, earthquake engineers, urban planners, social scientists, risk communicators, and
emergency management specialists, allowing scientific information to be readily converted to engineering
applications addressing social needs. This initiative will strengthen and promote the expansion of
successful current multi-national investments in the development of technical infrastructure, education
and training. The international partnerships developed by this initiative can stimulate and leverage
associated efforts in other fields including environmental change, management of watersheds, mitigation
of other natural hazards, and resource exploration. Establishment of a model of academic, government
and private partnerships, built on policies of open data exchange and multi-national collaboration, will
encourage linkages throughout the Americas across both political and disciplinary boundaries.
Need - While nations across the Americas share a vision of sustainable development and positive
change, they also share a common risk associated with the hazards of living on active plate boundaries:
ground shaking from earthquakes, flooding from tsunamis, and by-products from volcanic eruptions. The
significant vulnerability of the region to geophysical hazards was tragically illustrated by two different
events that occurred in the year following the Fifth Summit of the Americas in 2009: the January 12, 2010
M7.2 earthquake in Haiti, and the February 27, 2010 M8.8 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Chile.
Earthquakes are among the most destructive of natural events. As demonstrated by the disaster in
Haiti, even moderate sized earthquakes can claim hundreds of thousands of lives, particularly in underdeveloped and fragile communities. While some nations such as the US, Mexico, and Chile have
established strong hazards assessment and mitigation programs, many of the region’s developing nations
face significant earthquake risk for which they are ill-prepared. Large earthquakes can occur nearly
anywhere in the Caribbean and along the entire western coast of the Americas, but moderate earthquakes
can also occur in other areas, as the 2011 Virginia earthquake and its impact on Washington, DC
demonstrated.
In recent decades, international responses such as the one required for the Haiti disaster, including
immediate support of search and rescue operations, relief efforts, and long-term efforts to rebuild
sustainable communities, have become increasingly necessary because rapid urbanization in developing
countries has created large highly-vulnerable populations. While broad international efforts in postdisaster response to Haiti and similar tragedies are admirable, pre-disaster mitigation would strengthen
these communities, reducing the impact of extreme events and the need for extensive and expensive
response scenarios. Coordinated efforts are thus required of scientists, engineers and urban planners
(among others) to identify the hazards, to design and build safe structures, and to foster resilient
communities. To be sustainable, these commitments to hazard mitigation and risk reduction must be
linked to technical capacity-building and broader programs in education, urban development, poverty
alleviation, and adaptation to environmental change.
Implementation – The foundation of this initiative will be the collaborative development of
continental-scale observations, and a commitment to free and open exchange of data, establishing a
promising model for the engagement of the U.S. academic community, that may be emulated throughout
the Americas in support of significant advances in fundamental research, and applications with direct
benefit to society. Comparative studies with other earthquake-prone regions will contribute to better
understanding of earthquake and tsunami potential in other locations, including the northwestern U.S. and
Alaska. It will also open opportunities for collaborative research projects in the region, with special
appeal to the growing population of Spanish-speaking scientists and students in the U.S.
Emphasis on linking these developments with multi-national education and outreach programs
will ensure that the value of these investments reach a wide public, and will address the need for
enhanced efforts focusing on the development of a scientific and technologically competent workforce
throughout the Americas.
Today’s geophysical monitoring systems collect and analyze data with minimal technical
impediments. The far greater challenge is the establishment of national and regional collaboration
required to deploy this technical infrastructure, and to develop the human capacity to implement and
sustain the programs required for effective utilization. Since earthquakes show no respect for political
boundaries and require observations at continental or hemispherical scale, they provide a natural vehicle
for regional collaboration and confidence building. Regional collaboration can be stimulated by
construction of a trans-national continental-scale network of stations and observatories, built on broadly
accepted standards and with associated requirements for open data sharing. Once implemented, this multinational framework naturally provides the training ground for capacity-building and partnerships to
support regional and local observations necessary for reliable hazard assessment.
Reducing environmental risk requires the quantification of the underlying geo-hazards. In
the case of earthquakes, this means establishing permanent and continuous monitoring networks
to record frequent low magnitude earthquakes; link these observations with geological studies to
identify and characterize earthquake faults; and quantify regional and local earthquake hazards. In
addition to providing a fundamental research tool to identify and understand hazards, these
monitoring networks also serve the mission-oriented task of reporting on significant earthquake
occurrence, informing the public and guiding civil response. Other types of geo-hazards, including
storms, floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides, require similar approaches to observation,
assessment and monitoring. The underlying technologies involved in the operation and utilization
of these geo-observational systems can be easily scaled to operate on the continental, national,
regional and urban scales.
Relevance - An initiative to develop coordinated efforts in Geo-observations might be
particularly well aligned with the theme of the Sixth Summit of the Americas: “Connecting the
Americas: Partners for Prosperity", where the focus is on the role of physical integration and regional
cooperation. This initiative intersects directly with three of the four subthemes: citizen security, natural
disasters, and access to technology, and contributes to the forth sub-theme poverty and inequality in that
earthquakes are particularly devastating when they strike high-density poverty-stricken urban populations.