Earthquakes without frontiers: a partnership for increasing resilience to seismic hazard in the continents

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We identify the following four groups of academic beneficiaries:1) Researchers working on active faulting and the distribution of strain in the continents.People working on the tectonics of the region from Central Asia to China.People working on the use of geodetic strain measurement to use the combined GPS+InSAR velocity fields as a benchmark of comparison for people currently working solely on GPS only fields, such as currently go into GEM.People using satellite radar interferometry to study other areas of continental deformation, or to study other natural and man-made phenomena such as volcano deformation, landsliding, and surface subsidence, will benefit from the new automated processing tools that we will develop, and from the new methods for the production of regional deformation maps that integrate InSAR and GPS data. The line-of-sight deformation maps and strain fields produced in the project will be archived in the National Earth Observation Data Centre, and made available to the community via a simple web interface that will allow others to use them for their own investigations.2) Those working on secondary effects of earthquakes.People working on mass wasting and secondary hazards will benefit from the development of a process-based, rather than strictly empirical, approach to the magnitude and scope of landsliding. Our work will also be important to researchers interested in the supply and transport of sediment through orogens; by developing the first explicit tools for tracking post-seismic sediment mobility we will not only quantify the hazard represented by this process, but will also contribute to emerging debates on orogen-scale mass balance and response to perturbations.3) Those working on resilience and disaster risk reduction.People working on ground motion modelling and seismic hazard assessment will benefit from a greater understanding of the information needs of decision makers and how existing techniques need to be developed to respond to these needs.Academics researching the vulnerability and resilience of households, communities, and states to seismic-related hazards will benefit from the detailed comparative studies undertaken. Researchers working in the field of disaster risk reduction will benefit from the development of tools, the first of their kind, to strengthen resilience to earthquake and related-hazards across a range of socio-political settings. While the research will focus on earthquake and associated hazards, the findings will also be applicable to academics concerned with other natural hazards including volcanoes and tsunamis. Our work will also be important to researchers interested in governance of disaster risk reduction who will benefit from the detailed evaluations of different governance systems (both formal and informal) supporting disaster risk reduction activities. Our research here will contributeto emerging debates around the translation of international policy frameworks (Hyogo Framework for Action) into national level policy and practice. We will develop a much needed conceptual/theoretical framework for understanding, communicating and combining local, practitioner and scientific knowledge for effective risk reduction.4) Those working on action research and translation of research into practice. People working in science-policy studies who will benefit from the insights arising from the project into how the uptake of science can be secured in a variety of socio-political contexts.