European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), France
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) operates one of the top global earthquake information website (www.emsc-csem.org) attracting an average of 2 million visitors a month and has developed an effective presence on the main social networks. It has been pioneering the concept of “citizen seismology“ (www.citizenseismology.eu) where eyewitnesses shares their observations (testimonies, pictures, videos, comments) on earthquake’s effects through crowdsourcing techniques and an innovative real time analysis of website traffic named “flashsourcing”. Real time earthquake information is distributed through various means: websites, browser adds-on, the most complete “quakebot” on Twitter (@LastQuake) and smartphone applications (IOs, Android). It has launched the first citizen operated seismic networks in Europe. It was awarded the IRIS prize (2007) for original information and risk awareness initiative.
In CARISMAND, EMSC leads the Work Package “Cultural factors and technologies” which aims at a better understanding of the use and potential of technologies by citizens during the different phases of the risk cycle an, how these technologies are adopted or not by different groups of population. It will use its own experience acquired on its information systems, benefit from the numerous collaborations it has developed with other actors of disaster management and from the expertise of the PI (Dr. R. Bossu) who has been involved on several studies on this topic at national and international level.
