Doctoral Dissertation Research: Seismic Politics: The Scientific Development of an Early Alert System Infrastructure in Mexico

加州大学欧文分校的博士生伊丽莎白·雷迪在威廉·M·毛雷尔博士的指导下，将在墨西哥城从事科学与公共安全之间关系的研究。墨西哥城是一个创新的地震预警系统的所在地，该市经常发生强烈地震。Sistema Alerta Sismica(SAS)由一套协调的传感设备和无线电发射器组成。这些设备连接到医院、学校、媒体机构的警报机器上，有时甚至是私人住宅。从1991年开始，当SAS传感器设备记录到显著的地球运动时，它们会自动向墨西哥城的机器发送信号，然后机器发出响亮的警报，有时在地震到达墨西哥城之前长达60秒。这一警告取决于地震和无线电波移动的相对速度，为人们提供了一个宝贵的避难机会。然而，感知网络及其警报系统在范围上受到严重限制。由于SAS只能为某些地震提供警报，它一直受到科学和公众的大量辩论。在开发、维护和倡导SAS的过程中，工程师和科学家必须动员对社会世界的想法以及他们的技术专长。这项研究旨在探索这些小组如何处理其专业知识和公共安全要求的严格和可能相互冲突的要求：特别是他们如何接触与风险有关的概念，他们如何解释特别是墨西哥的社会和技术因素，以及机构要求和政策任务对他们工作的影响。当他们将尖端的地球物理和工程知识与公共风险管理结合在一起时，他们承担着他们自己所说的极具挑战性的工作。为了收集本次调查所需的数据，研究人员使用了档案资源、参与者观察、调查、社会网络分析、访谈和口述历史。她的发现将对墨西哥地震风险的社会政治产生影响，并对公共领域正在进行的科学研究产生影响。

University of California at Irvine doctoral student, Elizabeth Reddy, supervised by Dr. William M. Maurer, will undertake research in Mexico City on the relationship between science and public safety. Mexico City, subject to frequent and powerful earthquakes, is host to an innovative earthquake early alert system. The Sistema Alerta Sismica (SAS) is comprised of a coordinated set of sensory devices and radio transmitters. These are connected to alert machines in hospitals, schools, media outlets, and sometimes even private homes. Beginning in 1991, when SAS sensory devices register significant earth motion, they automatically send signals to alert machines in Mexico City that, in turn, issue a loud warning, sometimes up to sixty seconds before an earthquake reaches the city. This warning, which depends on the relative speeds at which earthquakes and radio waves move, provides a valuable opportunity for people to take shelter. However, the sensory network and its alert system are severely limited in scope. Because the SAS can only provide alerts for certain earthquakes, it has been subject to a great deal of scientific and public debate. In the process of developing the SAS, maintaining it, and advocating for it, engineers and scientists must mobilize ideas about the social world as well as their technical expertise. This research is designed to explore how these groups navigate the rigorous and possibly conflicting demands of their expertise and imperatives of public safety: particularly how they engage with concepts relating to risk, how they account for particularly Mexican social and technical factors, and ways that institutional imperatives and policy mandates affect their work. As they knit together cutting-edge geophysical and engineering knowledge with public risk management, they undertake work that they themselves describe as challenging in the extreme. To gather the data necessary for this investigation, the researcher utilizes archival resources, participant observation, surveys, social network analysis, interviews, and oral histories. Her findings will speak to production of social politics of seismic risk in Mexico, and has implications for ongoing research on science in the public sphere.