A Further Note on Operational Earthquake Forecasting: An Emergency Management Perspective

Abstract

Having watched from the sidelines as the debate in this journal ensued between proponents (Jordan, 2013; Jordan et al. , 2014) and opponents (Wang and Rogers, 2014; Wang, 2015) of operational earthquake forecasting, it seemed appropriate that there be a comment from a different perspective, that of an emergency manager. Emergency officials at the state and local government level are often placed in the uncomfortable position of having to translate a probabilistic statement regarding future earthquake occurrence into actionable recommendations for local response agencies and the public. This debate, drawing on events surrounding the L’Aquila and other recent earthquakes, focuses on whether or not authoritative information regarding time‐dependent probabilities should, or should not, be shared with communities at risk of a damaging earthquake. > Emergency officials at the state and local government level are often placed in the uncomfortable position of having to translate a probabilistic statement regarding future earthquake occurrence into actionable recommendations for local response agencies and the public. It is not my objective here to repeat the fine points of the arguments pro and con or to delve into the issue presented by Wang (2015) regarding the transparency of prediction versus forecasting or problems inherent in the formulation of forecasts and predictions (Kossobokov et al. , 2015), but to present an emergency management perspective on the debate and suggest that operational earthquake forecasting has been done in California since the implementation of the California Earthquake Advisory Plan in 1990. I should quickly add that the considerations—both scientific and procedural—behind activation of this plan do not conform to the rigorous standards proposed by Jordan et al. (2011) for operational earthquake forecasting. However, the plan and its activation can be considered an early and ongoing attempt to apply the basic principle of providing scientific information to emergency managers and the public …