Risk Analysis and Perception in Earthquake Decision Making

Project Description

This project investigates the way in which geovisualization can contribute to the analysis and perception of risk pertaining to earthquakes. Specifically, being able to accurately model the social and economic consequences of earthquake events is not by itself sufficient to improve seismic risk decision making. Also required is a more complete understanding of decision making for low probability-high consequence events, how such events are perceived, and how to communicate technical information about them to render it more useful in decision making about complex, interdependent and dynamic systems (e.g., communities, large corporations, utilities networks). This project will add to this interdisciplinary body of knowledge, bringing together recent research in decision analysis, human computer interaction, risk communication, and spatial analysis and exposure to mapped data and applying them to support seismic decision making.

The project will also explore using the MAEviz-integrated NEESgrid portal to experimentally test the effects of viewing archived simulations and experiments on perceptions of earthquake hazards, their consequences, and intervention needs, for both engineers and lay decision makers. To improve MAEviz representation of risk and decision analyses, the project will develop and empirically test, on a variety of kinds of potential MAEviz users, ways of presenting risk and uncertainty for spatially distributed data.

Project Staff

Luc Anselin, Arizona State University
Ann Bostrom, Georgia Institute of Technology (PI)
Robin Dillon-Merrill, Georgetown University

Funding

Sponsor: National Science Foundation/Mid-America Earthquake Center
Time Frame: Oct 2005 to Sept 2008

Poster

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid America Earthquake Center (2MB), Austin, TX Jan 19-21, 2006.