Can Science do anything about known/expected Earth Quakes ?

[Commander]

Most of us are aware of the devastating Earth Quake which has hit Nepal on 25th Apr 2015.

 

It is because of the Plate Tectonic Movements and the Indian Sub-Continent pushing below the Asian Plate we can expect a Major Earth Quake and Similar Disaster every 60 to 70 years , the last one having occurred in 1934 or so.

 

What Science can do about such Disasters ?

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

FYI :

What is an earthquake?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/In-India-JK-HP-Uttarakhand-fall-under-most-active-seismic-zone/articleshow/47063861.cms

Edited April 27, 2015 by swansont
copyright

[pavelcherepan]

Only try and improve predictions but still there will be a pretty major uncertainty in both time and place of an earthquake. Science can also develop new materials to construct better dwellings that are quake-resistant, but this very much depends on economical level of the country. Obviously Nepal is a pretty poor country and they can't afford to construct seismic-resistant buildings.

[Strange]

Obviously Nepal is a pretty poor country and they can't afford to construct seismic-resistant buildings.

 

Arguably, they can't afford not to.

[michel123456]

 

Arguably, they can't afford not to.

When the ground opens, there is no way to make a building resist.

 

What science can do for example is to make maps that show where there are great risks and push authorities to forbid building there. Usually, the push from science is mighty as a fly hitting a rhinoceros.

 

Science can also improve the quality of construction, usually making it more expensive. Not of much use for poor people.

 

Science can also improve the quality of material for finding and healing people under the rubble.

And many other things I guess

 

What science cannot do is predict accurately a seism.

But science can predict not accurately

GeoHazards International, a nonprofit research group aiming to reduce suffering due to natural disasters, measured the lethal potential of seismic disasters facing small and large cities in Asia and the Americas–areas most at risk for seismic calamity. The sample cities spanned both developed and developing countries. Variables measured: building frailty, potential for landslides and fires, and the rescue, firefighting and life-saving medical abilities of local authorities.

Kathmandu, Nepal, ranked first in the 2001 study, followed by Istanbul, Turkey; Delhi, India; Quito, Ecuador; Manila, Philippines; and Islambad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan–all of which could expect fatalities in the tens of thousands if disaster struck. The only first-world cities on the list were in Japan: Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. Fatalities in these cities were estimated in the hundreds, not thousands.

 

from this article

So from what I can see, science can predict that fatalities are worse in poor countries. That's a good job done.

[Acme]

When the ground opens, there is no way to make a building resist.

Perhaps, but quakes don't always open the ground. It's the shaking that causes the majority of damage and buildings can be made to stay together in severe shaking.

 

Most of us are aware of the devastating Earth Quake which has hit Nepal on 25th Apr 2015.

 

It is because of the Plate Tectonic Movements and the Indian Sub-Continent pushing below the Asian Plate we can expect a Major Earth Quake and Similar Disaster every 60 to 70 years , the last one having occurred in 1934 or so.

 

What Science can do about such Disasters ?

 

...

Thee is no validity to such a generalized conclusion for earthquakes to strike 'every 60 to 70 years'. The location, timing, and size of quakes is an extremely complex system which is why their prediction is currently unachievable.

 

See >> Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted

... For large earthquakes to be predictable, they would have to be unusual events resulting from specific physical states. However, the consensus of a recent meeting [HN5] (5) was that the Earth is in a state of self-organized criticality [HN16] where any small earthquake has some probability of cascading into a large event. This view is supported by the observation that the distribution of earthquake size (see figure) is invariant [HN17] with respect to scale for all but the largest earthquakes. Such scale invariance is ubiquitous in self-organized critical systems (6). Whether any particular small earthquake grows into a large earthquake depends on a myriad of fine details of physical conditions throughout a large volume, not just in the immediate vicinity of the fault (7). This highly sensitive nonlinear dependence of earthquake rupture on unknown initial conditions severely limits predictability (8,9). The prediction of individual large earthquakes would require the unlikely capability of knowing all of these details with great accuracy. Furthermore, no quantitative theory for analyzing these data to issue predictions exists at present. Thus, the consensus of the meeting was that individual earthquakes are probably inherently unpredictable. ...

[fiveworlds]

We could work out what places have earthquakes and simply not live there.

But if you are realistic about it just beacuse there are no earthquakes in other places doesn't mean they don't get hit by other disasters such as hurricane/tsunami. Some places have unfarmable land others are too cold. Others get hit by sandstorms/dust storms or don't have clean safe drinking water.

Edited April 27, 2015 by fiveworlds

[Strange]

When the ground opens, there is no way to make a building resist.

 

The fatalities from a given strength of earthquake seem to depend on the quality of buildings, more than anything else. This was a very bad quake, but there have been similar events in Japan, say, with few casualties. And I don't think this is purely a matter of money, but education and regulation.

We could work out what places have earthquakes and simply not live there.

 

"Just say no"?

 

Suggesting no one lives in Japan, California, New Zealand, Southern Europe, South America, ... doesn't sound very practical.

[fiveworlds]

Suggesting no one lives in Japan, California, New Zealand, Southern Europe, South America, ... doesn't sound very practical.

 

True there is very few places you can live not in fear of something. The island I live on doesn't get earthquakes but we live there knowing that a nearby massive glacier could fall into the ocean at anytime causing a massive tsunami which would destroy most of the island.

[Acme]

We could work out what places have earthquakes and simply not live there.

...

While most quakes occur in the vicinity of tectonic plate boundaries, no place on Earth is immune to quakes. The largest quakes recorded in the Eastern US occurred in the Midwest in the early 1880s and were not on a plate boundary. The damage to life-and-limb was limited because the area was largely unpopulated, but now that the area is densely populated and heavily developed the effect on humans will be severe. This is particularly true because 'everyone knows quakes don't happen in Missouri' so people haven't prepared.

See 1811-12 New Madrid earthquakes

The 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes were an intense intraplate earthquake series beginning with an initial pair of very large earthquakes on December 16, 1811. They remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the eastern United States in recorded history.[1] They, as well as the seismic zone of their occurrence, were named for the Mississippi River town of New Madrid, then part of the Louisiana Territory, now within Missouri.

...

-December 16, 1811, 0815 UTC (2:15 a.m.); (M ~7.2 - 8.1) epicenter in northeast Arkansas

-December 16, 1811, 1315 UTC (7:15 a.m.); (M ~7.2-8.1) epicenter in northeast Arkansas

-January 23, 1812, 1515 UTC (9:15 a.m.); (M ~7.0-7.8) epicenter in the Missouri Bootheel.

-February 7, 1812, 0945 UTC (3:45 a.m.); (M ~7.4-8.0) epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. New Madrid was destroyed.

[fiveworlds]

While most quakes occur in the vicinity of tectonic plate boundaries, no place on Earth is immune to quakes.

 

True and the tectonic plate boundaries are known to move too. But we haven't had anything over 6 in 1000 years

Edited April 28, 2015 by fiveworlds

[Acme]

True and the tectonic plate boundaries are known to move too. But we haven't had anything over 6 in 1000 years

It doesn't matter when or what magnitude you had; no place is immune. As the paper I cited in post #5 explains, earthquakes are unpredictable.

 

As to what 'science can do' besides engineering better infrastructure, science informs us what happens during earthquakes and from that information scientists can inform people on what to do when earthquakes strike. Not only can scientists inform us, they do inform us.

 

Detailed Inform-ation here: >>Ready.Gov:Earthquakes

One of the most frightening and destructive phenomena of nature is a severe earthquake and its terrible aftereffects. An earthquake is the sudden, rapid shaking of the earth, caused by the breaking and shifting of subterranean rock as it releases strain that has accumulated over a long time.

 

For hundreds of millions of years, the forces of plate tectonics have shaped the earth, as the huge plates that form the earths surface slowly move over, under and past each other. Sometimes, the movement is gradual. At other times, the plates are locked together, unable to release accumulated energy. When the accumulated energy grows strong enough, the plates break free. If the earthquake occurs in a populated area, it may cause many deaths and injuries and extensive property damage.

 

All 50 states and 5 U.S. territories are at some risk for earthquakes. Earthquakes can happen at any time of the year.

 

The 2011 East Coast earthquake illustrated the fact that it is impossible to predict when or where an earthquake will occur, so it is important that you and your family are prepared ahead of time.

[Robittybob1]

True there is very few places you can live not in fear of something. The island I live on doesn't get earthquakes but we live there knowing that a nearby massive glacier could fall into the ocean at anytime causing a massive tsunami which would destroy most of the island.

Where is that?

[iNow]

To the thread title - If you live in Oklahoma, you could stop fracking:

 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/weather-underground

Until 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one to two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater each year. (Magnitude-3.0 earthquakes tend to be felt, while smaller earthquakes may be noticed only by scientific equipment or by people close to the epicenter.) In 2009, there were twenty. The next year, there were forty-two. In 2014, there were five hundred and eighty-five, nearly triple the rate of California. Including smaller earthquakes in the count, there were more than five thousand. This year, there has been an average of two earthquakes a day of magnitude 3.0 or greater.

[Acme]

To the thread title - If you live in Oklahoma, you could stop fracking:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/weather-underground

Not exactly.

Repost from Bad news for Londoners - an oil deposit found near Gatwick airport thread:

A new study in Oklahoma, where earthquakes have increased on a grand scale over the past few years, indicates it is not the fracking itself that is causing the quakes, but rather the injection of wastewater into formations deeper than the extraction depth . ...

 

Seismic shift: Oklahoma's earthquakes triggered by wastewater disposal wells

 

...

Link between earthquakes and industry

 

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) issued its most strongly worded statement yet linking the oil and gas industry to the states earthquakes.

 

State geologist Richard D. Andrews and state seismologist Austin Holland say the spike in earthquakes particularly in central and north-central areas of the state is very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process.

 

The primary suspected source of triggered seismicity is not from hydraulic fracturing but from the injection/disposal of water associated with oil and gas production, the report from the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) reads. ...

...

 

[Robittybob1]

To the thread title - If you live in Oklahoma, you could stop fracking:

 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/weather-underground

How reliable is that information. Fracking depths would not be significant to the depths of earthquakes.

 

90 percent of all gas wells drilled in the United States since 1949 have been fracked. # The depth of most shale gas deposits drilled is between 6,000 and 10,000 feet – water aquifers exist at an average depth of 500 feet.Jun 21, 2011

 

 

www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/.../ten-things-to-know-about-fracking/

Edited April 28, 2015 by Robittybob1

[John Cuthber]

Not exactly.

Repost from Bad news for Londoners - an oil deposit found near Gatwick airport thread:

If they didn't do the fracking, they wouldn't have to get rid of the waste water by pumping it into the earthquake zone.

[StringJunky]

Thee is no validity to such a generalized conclusion for earthquakes to strike 'every 60 to 70 years'. The location, timing, and size of quakes is an extremely complex system which is why their prediction is currently unachievable.

People are playing chinese whispers. A few days ago, I read research - the one people are probably misquoting - is that, after an earthquake in that region another occurs about 70 years later ie occurs as a pair 70 years apart. The researchers think it takes that long for the stress to be relieved on that particular fault after the initial one. The predictability of the first one is unknown.. They have found two other paired events like this in the last 8oo years or so. If I can I can find the article again I'll post it.

 

Edit: Found it

Edited April 28, 2015 by StringJunky

[Acme]

If they didn't do the fracking, they wouldn't have to get rid of the waste water by pumping it into the earthquake zone.

Not so. From the article I cited: {Bolding mine]

...

The seismicity rate in Oklahoma is about 600 times greater than it was before 2008, around the time dewatering started in the state. Just last year, 585 magnitude 3+ earthquakes hit Oklahoma — compared with 109 in 2013.

For the dewatering process, extremely salty water, which coexists with oil and gas below the Earth’s surface, is separated from those substances after extraction. Then barrels of wastewater are deposited into wells far deeper than their point of origin.

Some of this wastewater is a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking: a process in which high-pressure liquids are blasted beneath the ground to fracture rock, releasing natural gas. But fracking only accounts for a small percentage of the water deposited in these wells.

How this happens

The majority of the state’s wastewater is deposited in the Arbuckle formations, which are underground reservoirs of dolomite, limestone and other rocks.

Parts of the Arbuckle are highly fractured with expansive systems of cavities and caverns that the energy sector found perfect for dumping wastewater.

“It is known to have bulk porosity, voids in the rocks that can hold fluids,” Andrews said. “They don’t need to inject the water under any other pressure. They just funnel it in. It will take as much water as you can put into it.”

Much of the wastewater, with much higher salinity levels than ocean water, travels many miles away from its injection site and seeps into the underlying crystalline basement; such permeability makes it difficult to link a specific well with seismic activity.

It can take anywhere from weeks to more than a year of this water pouring in before it triggers naturally occurring stresses in the Earth — causing earthquakes.

“There are faults pretty much all across the country. It doesn’t take much change to the system to cause those faults to slip. Those wells are providing the little bits of change needed,” Briana Mordick, a staff scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Yahoo News.

Most of the earthquakes have occurred within the crystalline basement, on faults within Oklahoma’s tectonic stress regime, according to the OGS

...

People are playing chinese whispers. A few days ago, I read research - the one people are probably misquoting - is that, after an earthquake in that region another occurs about 70 years later ie occurs as a pair 70 years apart. The researchers think it takes that long for the stress to be relieved on that particular fault after the initial one. The predictability of the first one is unknown.. They have found two other paired events like this in the last 8oo years or so. If I can I can find the article again I'll post it.

 

Edit: Found it

Whispers indeed. And the article says 80 years or so; not 70.

◾2015's quake follows the pattern with a gap between events of 80 years or so.

The article then concludes:

"Early calculations suggest that Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake is probably not big enough to rupture all the way to the surface, so there is still likely to be more strain stored, and we should probably expect another big earthquake to the west and south of this one in the coming decades," says Bollinger.

So in essence the 'prediction' is that earthquakes will happen in the future but nobody knows when, which just reiterates that earthquakes are unpredictable. Edited April 28, 2015 by Acme

[StringJunky]

,

...

So in essence the 'prediction' is that earthquakes will happen in the future but nobody knows when, which just reiterates that earthquakes are unpredictable.

Absolutely, but they've possibly found a statistically significant pattern in this one. As you know, science is statistics and probabilities, and this is no exception.

Edited April 28, 2015 by StringJunky

[Acme]

Absolutely, but they've possibly found a statistically significant pattern in this one. As you know, science is statistics and probabilities, and this is no exception.

Yes of course I know about statistics and probabilities in science. However, in order to get any usable information from statistics and probabilities one needs sufficient data points and we simply don't have that when it comes to earthquake prediction. I turn again to the paper I cited earlier here and repeat my quote from it: (Bolding mine)

... For large earthquakes to be predictable, they would have to be unusual events resulting from specific physical states. However, the consensus of a recent meeting [HN5] (5) was that the Earth is in a state of self-organized criticality [HN16] where any small earthquake has some probability of cascading into a large event. This view is supported by the observation that the distribution of earthquake size (see figure) is invariant [HN17] with respect to scale for all but the largest earthquakes. Such scale invariance is ubiquitous in self-organized critical systems (6). Whether any particular small earthquake grows into a large earthquake depends on a myriad of fine details of physical conditions throughout a large volume, not just in the immediate vicinity of the fault (7). This highly sensitive nonlinear dependence of earthquake rupture on unknown initial conditions severely limits predictability (8,9). The prediction of individual large earthquakes would require the unlikely capability of knowing all of these details with great accuracy. Furthermore, no quantitative theory for analyzing these data to issue predictions exists at present. Thus, the consensus of the meeting was that individual earthquakes are probably inherently unpredictable. ...

Source: >>Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted

[StringJunky]

Yes of course I know about statistics and probabilities in science. However, in order to get any usable information from statistics and probabilities one needs sufficient data points and we simply don't have that when it comes to earthquake prediction. I turn again to the paper I cited earlier here and repeat my quote from it: (Bolding mine)

Source: >>Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted

Yes, but the author of the research I linked has particular interest in the geology and seismology of the the Himalayas, so he may be onto something.

[Acme]

Yes, but the author of the research I linked has particular interest in the geology and seismology of the the Himalayas, so he may be onto something.

Since the general case of prediction as noted in my cited article applies to all specific cases, your guy is onto nothing but supposition. Again from my cited paper:

 

Earthquake prediction [HN5-7] is usually defined as the specification of the time, location, and magnitude [HN8-9] of a future earthquake within stated limits. Prediction would have to be reliable (few false alarms and few failures) and accurate (small ranges of uncertainty in space, time, and magnitude) to justify the cost of response. Previous Perspectives in Science may have given a favorable impression of prediction research, and the news media and some optimistic scientists encourage the belief that earthquakes can be predicted (1). Recent research suggests to us that this belief is incorrect. ...

The proof is in the pudding and if your guy can peg a Himalayan or any other earthquake to a particular day (or even week or month), give an exact location and magnitude and then it happens, he/they will be worthy of the kind of confidence you suggest I place in him/them. Otherwise, not.

 

Back on the OP, there is an earthquake warning system being tested in my area that may give as much as 30 seconds warning to residents. Note that this is not prediction, rather reaction made possible by the different types of waves generated by earthquakes.

 

Northwest earthquake-warning system to get its 1st public test @ Seattle Times

When late-night comedian Conan OBrien considered the question recently, the result was a laugh-out-loud segment with people stampeding into walls, snapping risqué selfies or cranking up the boom box for one last dance.

A more sober and useful range of options will be on the table next week, when a small group of businesses and agencies embark on the Northwests first public test of a prototype earthquake early-warning system.

Up until now, weve been running it and watching the results in-house only, said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington.

Now, companies including Boeing, Alaska Airlines and Intel will be able to work with the system and figure out how to make use of warning times so slight they seem at first like a joke.

[StringJunky]

Since the general case of prediction as noted in my cited article applies to all specific cases, your guy is onto nothing but supposition. Again from my cited paper:

 

 

The proof is in the pudding and if your guy can peg a Himalayan or any other earthquake to a particular day (or even week or month), give an exact location and magnitude and then it happens, he/they will be worthy of the kind of confidence you suggest I place in him/them. Otherwise, not.

 

Back on the OP, there is an earthquake warning system being tested in my area that may give as much as 30 seconds warning to residents. Note that this is not prediction, rather reaction made possible by the different types of waves generated by earthquakes.

 

Northwest earthquake-warning system to get its 1st public test @ Seattle Times

The article was about the pairing of earthquakes in that region ...nothing more.

[Acme]

The article was about the pairing of earthquakes in that region ...nothing more.

Yes, but you quoted me & my citation & presented the article as to imply that it contradicted the unpredictability of earthquakes when you said "so he may be onto something.". Not only do a couple data points not satisfy a valid statistical analysis, the only thing the author is 'on to' is a generalization that more earthquakes will probably occur in the area at sometime in the future.

 

From your article:Nepal quake 'followed historic pattern'

...Over the following 89 years, strain accumulated in the neighboring westerly segment of fault, finally rupturing in 1344.

 

Now, history has repeated itself, with the 1934 fault transferring strain westwards along the fault, which has finally been released today, 81 years later.

 

And, worryingly, the team warns there could be more to come.

 

"Early calculations suggest that Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake is probably not big enough to rupture all the way to the surface, so there is still likely to be more strain stored, and we should probably expect another big earthquake to the west and south of this one in the coming decades," says Bollinger. ...

Bollinger's research is valid insomuch as it adds a few data points, but it is a far cry from satisfying the number and type of data points that would be necessary for specific predictions that could do anything in the way of warning people to evacuate.

[StringJunky]

Yes, but you quoted me & my citation & presented the article as to imply that it contradicted the unpredictability of earthquakes when you said "so he may be onto something.". Not only do a couple data points not satisfy a valid statistical analysis, the only thing the author is 'on to' is a generalization that more earthquakes will probably occur in the area at sometime in the future.

 

From your article:Nepal quake 'followed historic pattern'

 

Bollinger's research is valid insomuch as it adds a few data points, but it is a far cry from satisfying the number and type of data points that would be necessary for specific predictions that could do anything in the way of warning people to evacuate.

Yep. It won't be of any use practically, assuming it's correct, until about 80 years after the next one but it does add to the body of knowledge. It just shows how much work one has to put in just to get that bit data. It's a slow old job.