Enhancement to: "Earthquakes Without Frontiers: a partnership for increasing resilience to seismic hazard in the continents"

This proposal is to integrate researchers from India into an existing International Partnership that brings together scientists from countries affected by damaging and potentially catastrophic earthquakes in the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia. This Partnership, established through an earlier (and current) NERC-IOF grant and a current NERC-ESRC consortium grant and led by investigators in the NERC-funded COMET+* consortium, will be enhanced and expanded through the participation of India.

The Partnership was formed as a response to a series of high-impact earthquakes over the last decade, which emphasized the stark contrast existing today between the effects of earthquakes in rich and developing nations. In terms of human life, the risk is overwhelmingly concentrated in the developing world, and predominantly in continental interiors, with the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia being particularly threatened. Many communities and cities in this region are known to be vulnerable because of past earthquakes, but they now have considerably larger exposed populations.

A first and essential step in reducing that vulnerability is to improve the level of knowledge and characterization of the hazard concerned; which is far below, for example, California or Japan. That task requires the engagement of scientists in the countries concerned, but would be greatly aided by the expertise available in the international scientific community, even in countries where the local scientific base is already strong.

In particular, two geological effects contribute to continental Asia's special vulnerability: (1) Earthquakes in continental interiors typically occur on widely-distributed faults that are poorly known and move relatively infrequently. By comparison, those on plate boundaries adjacent to oceans (such as Japan, Chile) occur on faults that are more localized, better known and move more often. (2) Many human settlements in continental interiors concentrate (and then grow) in locations close to earthquake-generating faults, which control topography, water supply or trade routes.

Improving knowledge and understanding of the earthquake hazard is therefore inescapably linked to the first-order scientific question of how continental tectonics works: a cutting-edge priority at the highest level in international science, which also requires the full range of observational, theoretical and technical capabilities now available to the scientific community.

The issues involved in addressing earthquake hazard and earthquake science in the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia are therefore best tackled by international partnerships of scientists, which can help bring an appropriate mixture of expertise, technology, man-power and training to bear in each area or country. That is the point of the Partnership we aim to enhance here by facilitating the participation of scientists from India.

The Partnership functions through meetings, workshops and training activities, including a summer school and exchange visits, principally of young scientists between the UK and participating countries. The principal Project Partners in the original IOF proposal, who also contribute substantially to the costs, are Italy, Kazakhstan and China. Supporting members include Greece, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It was always the intention that others would join later, and the addition of India proposed here will add one of the most vulnerable countries in the entire Alpine-Himalayan-Asia region. The intention is that the benefits and functioning of the Partnership will continue well beyond the duration of the IOF award.

*COMET+ is the Dynamic Earth and Geohazards Group of NERC's National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO): see (http://comet.nerc.ac.uk)

Who will benefit?

The principles beneficiaries of the Partnership that will be enhanced in this proposal are:

(1) The countries participating in the partnership, including the new partner India: that is its point.
(2) The relations between UK government institutions, NGOs and foreign equivalents.
(3) International institutions and organizations concerned with earthquake hazard.
(4) The Insurance and Risk Industry concerned with earthquake hazard and catastrophe planning.
(5) The wider public understanding of science.

How will they benefit?

The countries participating in the partnership include a number of government-funded or -run institutions charged with advising on earthquake risk. This proposal is to stimulate and enhance their earthquake science capabilities: and these organizations are well aware of the importance of that science in helping them with their government advisory roles. Our scientific input will aid them in this important additional function, as will the experience we can bring of government and inter-government interaction through our colleagues in the British Geological Survey (BGS), including its Director and a KE Fellow.

UK institutions are likely to benefit through increased contacts and interaction with their overseas equivalents that are likely to lead to other cooperative activities or contracts. The most obvious is the BGS, which has a lot of experience and advice to offer countries concerned with enhancing their national capabilities, such as monitoring networks. They may well involve other UK institutions in this endeavor.

This project will provide input to international institutions and organizations concerned with earthquake hazard. The most obvious is the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), concerned with a global characterization of potentially earthquake-generating faults: essentially an international scientific data-gathering project. NERC and BGS are partners in GEM, and some COMET+ investigators are already contributing their own inputs on faults and countries they have been studying. Several of our overseas Partners are also their own national representatives on GEM, so there are multiple and clear links to make sure the new science from this Partnership, which will be highly relevant, is channeled effectively into the GEM project.

Insurance and Risk Industry, both in the UK and overseas, is concerned with earthquake hazard and catastrophe planning. It is a principal driver behind the GEM project and is clearly interested in the constantly-evolving understanding of earthquake hazard. We are well connected to this industry through: (1) the BGS and NERC Council, which includes Mr. Rowan Douglas of Willis Re; (2) the COMET+ Advisory Board, which includes Dr. Andrew Coburn of Risk Management Solutions (RMS); (3) Prof. Robin Spence of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd, who is a member of the Willis Research Network and on the Scientific Board of GEM.

Large, damaging earthquakes are rarely out of the news for long, and so the potential for engagement with the public understanding of science is considerable. There is a constant demand for COMET+ and BGS investigators to appear on radio and television broadcasts, to write articles in the popular press, and to give public lectures. All the investigators on the original IOF proposal and this pump-priming enhancement are regularly engaged in this activity, even when the earthquake is not in a country where we work directly. The public appetite for informed, clear, understandable and jargon-free explanations of natural catastrophes is insatiable. Such events are virtually certain to occur during the duration of an IOF award. We will pursue energetically the opportunities to engage with the public through lectures, broadcasts, web sites and briefings to UK government agencies and NGOs.