Citizen Seismology Without Seismologists? Lessons Learned From Mayotte Leading to Improved Collaboration

Abstract

Starting the 10th May 2018, a series of earthquakes has hit Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean. Facing a lack of seismic data, scientific information and communication from the authorities, the inhabitants took advantage of social media to develop, on their own, a citizen seismology group, composed of more than 10,000 people. Due to a particular cultural context, this was carried out mainly without the seismologist community. While some citizens did share seismological information (and eventually volcanology information when it was discovered that the earthquakes were caused by a newborn , undersea volcano), the lack of seismologists in the group also lead to the emergence of misinformation and even conspiracy theories. This mistrusting atmosphere had negative consequences for the way various seismological organizations were perceived, including LastQuake, a crowdsource-based earthquake information app which allows eyewitnesses to share information about earthquakes they felt, combined with seismic data. However, due to the lack of seismic data for these earthquakes, some were not displayed in the app. This lack of information and understanding of how the system functioned led to additional mistrust toward this citizen seismology tool. This paper combines sociological observations with an empirical approach. First, a sociological analysis of this independent citizen science network enables an identification of the reasons for its creation and the pitfalls caused by the absence of collaboration with the scientific community. Then, an empirical case study of the LastQuake system exposes how it has been improved to offer information, while admittedly more incomplete, is nevertheless closer to citizens' needs. It concludes that citizen seismology requires a stronger collaboration between citizens' and scientists' communities in order to be more efficient. It also advocates for scientific communication that takes into account cultural context from the beginning.

Earthquakes Reconnaissance Data Sources, a Literature Review

“…[26] SAR [12], [40] InSAR [41], [42], [43], [ [53], [54], [55] Closed-circuit television videos (CCTV) [56], [57] Missions deployed, or missions that have had their results published during the period covered by this literature review are Albania [47,58], Puerto Rico [45,46], Mayotte [52], Mexico [28][29][30], Palu -North Sulawesi (Indonesia) [53,56,59], Hualien (China) [51], Central Italy [32,33,35,60], Muisne (Ecuador) [35], Nepal [1,40,49], and Napa -California (USA) [54,55], Haiti [12] and L'Aquila (Italy) [14,37]. The location of major earthquakes epicentres from 2014 -2019 included as case studies in this literature review is depicted in Figure 3.…”

“…Earthquake Network is a citizen science research project implementing an earthquake early warning system (EEW) based on smartphone crowdsourcing [52]. People install a smartphone application, and they receive real-time alerts when the smartphone network detects earthquakes [46].…”

“…When the smartphone is unused and charging, the app monitors the accelerometer for detecting vibrations likely due to an earthquake. If a seismic movement is detected, a signal is sent to a server that collects signals from all the smartphones [46,52]. Following the algorithm, the server decides in real-time if an earthquake is happening.…”

“…The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) developed a multichannel rapid information system consisting of websites, a Twitter quakebot called LastQuake, and an eponym smartphone app [45][46][47]52] at the interface between global users looking for information the EMSC. This multichannel has two objectives: To offer practical information in regions where an earthquake is felt and collect reports from users containing direct and indirect observation related to the intensity and damages caused by the earthquake [17].…”

A Socio-Seismology Experiment in Haiti

“…During the 2019 seismic sequence in Mayotte, for example, the lack of communication from the scientific community and the authorities, added to the local socio-cultural context, led citizens to consider false information and conspiracy theories as the only rational explanations in the face of unexplained seismic events and the silence of these authorities. By organizing themselves on the Facebook social network, citizens compiled information and developed their own expertize (Fallou and Bossu, 2019;Fallou et al, 2020).…”