Making seismology accessible to the public in Nepal: an earthquake location tutorial for education purposes

Résumé 0

Earthquakes become a hot topic for discussion in Nepali communities when a big local event happens. Beyond the seismic monitoring and research, efforts to improve the population’s preparedness or to reduce earthquake related risks are limited, and there is a gap between scientific community and society. To establish the missing link between seismology and citizens we have initiated an educational approach called Seismology at School in Nepal and a total of 30 low-cost seismometers have been installed in schools. The program is engaging the public on earthquake related activities and found to be effective in raising the awareness levels of children, promoting broader earthquake learning in the community, thus improving the adaptive capacities and preparedness for future earthquakes. The aim of this work is to present a simple tutorial of earthquake location mainly for Nepali citizens and school teachers. We describe procedures for computing an earthquake epicenter using an open and user-friendly software, Seisgram2K. This tutorial helps the public to have first-order information on earthquakes, by allowing to locate epicenters, which will increase the frequency of earthquake discussion in the community. Open seismic data and the earthquake location tutorial helps to inspire the next generation to study Earth sciences, which is very important and required for earthquake prone countries, like Nepal.