Rapid Public Information and Situational Awareness After the November 26, 2019, Albania Earthquake: Lessons Learned From the LastQuake System

Abstract

The use of the LastQuake information system, its app, the associated Twitter account, and, to a lesser extent, the EMSC’s websites have been analyzed for the 7 days following the November 26, 2019, M6.4 Albania destructive earthquake to evaluate what can be improved and how crowdsourcing of information and monitoring of both use and absence of use of the app can contribute to rapid situational awareness. The mainshock and its numerous felt aftershocks triggered a strong public desire for information, which in turn led to rapid and massive adoption of the LastQuake app by up to 5% of the country’s population. The constant flow of new app users created a stress test of the app’s crowdsourcing features and led to errors in the association of felt reports with their appropriate earthquake. However, these errors had no identifiable impact, supporting the conclusion that the curation mechanisms currently in place are efficient. The rapid succession of felt aftershocks contributed to these errors by making information related to the mainshock difficult to access within hours of its occurrence, especially for new users who were not attuned to the app, since more recent events pushed older ones down the timeline of presented information. This revealed that prioritization of information within the app layout was lacking and must be an important design objective, especially during aftershock sequences. LastQuake has been shown to be a powerful tool for rapid situational awareness. The possibility of damage was detected within 8 min of the mainshock earthquake by a lack of LastQuake app activity close to the epicenter. This possibility was then gradually strengthened as new data became available and was finally confirmed by the reception of the first geo-located pictures of structural damage and building collapse within 60–70 min. Direct exchanges on Twitter were appreciated by eyewitnesses and seemed to help to reduce their anxiety in some cases (based on the personal reports). Questions mainly focused on the possible evolution of the seismicity. Attempts to debunk prediction claims were difficult. We report on how this could be eased and possibly made more efficient by sharing among the different actors a clear, concise, pre-prepared statement in the local language, that explains the state of scientific knowledge and the difference between prediction, early warning, or forecasts.