Implementation and future challenges of seismotectonic mapping system for earthquake emergency response

Abstract

Earthquake emergency response maps represent a set of geographical maps related to the seismic activity, geological tectonic background, assessment of economy and population losses, secondary disaster probability, as well as other information for emergency response and rescue. It requires producing these kinds of maps as quickly as possible after an earthquake. The seismotectonic map is one of the most important maps for earthquake emergency response. In this study, we developed an earthquake emergency response system to produce the map automatically. This paper introduces a intelligent system framework using spatial analysis, version management and web communication technology for emergency response, data maintenance, remote map revision, version management and statistics, which is not discussed in previous studies. The system based on MySQL, ArcGIS platform, python, and curl. It can detect the earthquake fast report proactive. When capturing the official report, it activated the response function module. The system achieved the first version mapping, fault data pushing, and earthquake catalogue updating by data-driven method automatically and rapidly. The mapping process can be divided into map layout and expert knowledge. The expert knowledge part can be divided into a geography map and explanatory note. The system performed well on the map layout and geography map. The explanatory note in the map, which introduces regional tectonics and expert knowledge, can provide the nearest fault’s name, active age, and feature in the first version. Experts need to produce the second version manually. The fault data of 5°×5°area centred on the main shock is clipped and sent to a specified mailbox. The system added the earthquake parameters to the database. The result shows that this system finished these work well automatically and reduce the responds time and data maintenance time. If the earthquake causes serious calamity, seismogeology experts need to collect, summarize and analyse literature, document, and other information for successor versions and even predicting aftershock and disaster. It is practically needed to build a more intelligent and efficient system to produce a successor version of the map and push more knowledge in the future. The challenge in the future is to develop a more intelligent system to self-explain the seismotectonic map and push expert knowledge. This goal can only be achieved by processing expert knowledge data like regional lithology, tectonic structure, paleo earthquake, and historical earthquake in the database layer, data access layer, and business logic layer of the system.