From an AGU press release, potential charges for failure to forecast an earthquake. h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard.
Scientists May Face Manslaughter Charges After Earthquake
22 June 2010
AGU Science Policy Alert 10-18
Seven Italian scientists and government officials are under investigation on charges of manslaughter for failure to warn the city of L’Aquila, Italy, before an earthquake hit last year, killing hundreds. The scientists and officials under investigation, who are employees of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and the Civil Protection Department, took part in a meeting of the Major Risks Committee on 31 March 2009. At the meeting, the committee told L’Aquila city officials that “just because a small series of quakes has been observed [in L’Aquila] there is no reason to suggest that the sequence of low-magnitude tremors are a precursor to a major event,” which was deemed “improbable, although not impossible.” However, on 6 April 2009, the city was struck by a Mw 6.3 earthquake that killed 308 people.
The criminal charges against these scientists and officials are unfounded. Despite decades of scientific research in Italy and in the rest of the world, it is not yet possible to accurately and consistently predict the timing, location, and magnitude of earthquakes before they occur. It is thus incorrect to assume that the L’Aquila earthquake should have been predicted. The charges may also harm international efforts to understand natural disasters and mitigate associated risk, because risk of litigation will discourage scientists and officials from advising their government or even working in the field of seismology and seismic risk assessment.
Science is making critical contributions to the understanding and mitigation of earthquake hazards in Italy and the world. Examples include providing tools such as seismic risk maps to determine areas of greatest vulnerability, improving seismic wave analysis so that we can better understand how the Earth moves during an earthquake, and increasing our capabilities for seismic monitoring and for providing rapid information on earthquake location and severity for early warning systems and first responders.
It is in the best interest of all countries to reduce earthquake vulnerability through awareness, preparation, and mitigation. Local government officials should work with scientists and engineers to prepare for seismic hazards in that region. To truly mitigate earthquake risk, governments must utilize the long-term hazard assessment, post-earthquake Shake Maps, and other tools created by seismologists to educate residents and inform sound infrastructure policy. Communities can increase their earthquake preparedness through implementation of building codes based on these long-term hazard assessments, retrofitting older buildings, improving emergency response, and increasing public awareness of the hazard and individual responsibility during and after these tragic events.
In support of the Italian scientists and officials, the INGV has written an open letter to the President of the Republic of Italy. The letter is open for public signatures and, as of 21 June 2010, has 5,028 signatories from around the world, many of whom are geoscientists. Please sign the letter and pass this information on to your colleagues if you support these seven scientists and officials and their right to conduct best scientific practices without risk of persecution.
Update 28 June: The letter has been closed for signatures with 5,165 signatories.
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Italy is so beautiful. Why not to move some forecasting offices to the italian riviera, like Giss, Noaa, Nasa, etc.?
Makes one think the Amanda Knox case needs to be revisited, doesn’t it? This legal system is broken.
To not cause adverse economic consequences, a prediction of eminent danger must be proved quickly. This is not the case for earthquakes and never will be, nor will it be true for climate. In these cases the prediction may require decades to prove. Even erroneous predictions of adverse weather often take days to prove out, and until the forecast is proved wrong the damage grows–the misforecast for Earl is a good example, but there are thousands of others.
The only sensible route for dealing with highly uncertain events is engineering to mitigate the consequences of the event, and insurance that helps individuals deal with expense, but the insurance also has to be structured in a way to encourage individuals to manage risk sensibly. Examples include:
1) Building codes appropriate for extreme cold, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. Advanced building designs that can absorb earthquake energy and allow repair rather than demolition and rebuilding.
2) Crop insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, separate from routine casualty insurance, and all with premiums set appropriate to risk.
3) Prohibit building expensive assets in places where they cannot be defended. For instance, why build a city in an area subject to floods and surge that is also below sea level? Why continue to force the Mississippi River to locate 300 miles east of its equilibrium location using levees?
The tendency to view uniform insurance rates as being “fair” and make laws requiring such, does little except to injure risk management. If I think that a hurricane causing a catastrophy will lead to the Federal government bailing out uninsured homeowners, then my cost/benefit calculations are going to be skewed in the direction of accepting more risk, and I amy forego flood insurance altogether. Even getting people to purchase flood or earthquake insurance has the perverse effect of subsidizing risky construction unless the rates are related to the risk taken.
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
How? Really how?
Yes, I think it is definitely absurd to get into the discussion of levying criminal charges against people for failing to predict an earthquake. If another earthquake strikes Iran, is it an act of war by Italy? They are impossible to predict currently, and suggesting otherwise is probably irresponsible.
The Italian justice system is weird and nuts. They have attempted to punish race drivers if accidents happen even if the incidents are honest errors in judgement.
The world will end, the world will end, the world will end. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
To: The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley:
Even in Jaws the mayor of the town was not sued for down playing the likelihood of a shark attack.
As for US laws Vs Italian laws, there are a lot of problems with the US justice system, but failure to sue often enough is not one of them. When there is no one to blame, don’t blame anyone.
This form the basis for your financial education?
Lew rockwell and who is devvy.com anyway? Any accreditation or credibility beyond self-accreditation and self-credibility (just because a ‘source’ seems to resonate with your thoughts at the time doesn’t make it right, true or correct … the ‘stopped clock is right twice a day’ phenom comes to mind here)?
Please, I implore everyone to weigh the material supplied by GC with more studied, accredited material that *has* withstood the test of time *and* cross-examination …
.
re: Przemysław Pawełczyk says: September 5, 2010 at 3:52 am
Przemyslaw, the reality is that people tend to panic, and evacuations almost always cause some injury and often even deaths. As a result, it is essential for those in official positions to be VERY careful about declaring the need for an evacuation – and even more careful in their chose of wording for the announcements.
I’ve been involved off and on (mostly on) for several decades in emergency planning for nuclear power facilities and the surrounding areas, and seen what most public officials tend to do during our regular drills. The overwhelming tendency is to declare evacuations when they are NOT warranted, in an over abundance of caution. They not only call for evacuations where its not needed, but for far larger areas than could be conceivably needed also. Often this is done even when people would actually be safer remaining in their homes.
So one thing we inevitably have to teach is that there are risks and harm from evacuations also. Not just the inconvenience to people, and the immediate costs to the public and businesses (and the government too, which of course comes right back to costs to its citizens), but also from the inevitable car accidents, and harm especially in trying to evacuate facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. In the latter cases especially (hospitals and nursing homes), it is very difficult to evacuate everyone without medical harm, injuries, or even deaths occurring.
So these things HAVE to be considered by those in public office – and I suspect that many if not most of them never get good training on these sorts of issues, at least here in the USA. If I recall correctly, these concerns could easily have been part of the thinking in the movie Dante’s Peak.
Regardless, its not just crass uncaring greed that is responsible for those in positions of authority being hesitant to call for evacuations – and as I’ve already noted, my experience has been that most are far too prone to call for evacuation when its NOT a good thing to do, in an excess of caution, a lack of understanding of the harm that comes with just the evacuation itself, and a worry about “what will be said about me AFTER the fact if it turns out that evacuation would have been better even tho at the time everything made it look like evacuation wasn’t needed?”
Sooooo…… Its an extremely difficult calculation and call to make when the danger is questionable. Shoot, it can be quite difficult to make a good call that way even when the danger is fairly well known and understood!! Regardless, the harm and cost of evacuation HAS to be factored in, or officials can actually harm or even kill more people than just doing nothing would have.
Anyone care to bet against the greens starting to crow that this is exactly the reason the precautionary principle must be followed in global warming. If it can happen in an earthquake, it can happen with CO2. When in doubt, shut down everything that burns carbon fuel. We’re all doomed.
Steve from rockwood says
———
If earthquakes cannot be predicted then why did the scientists predict an earthquake to be improbable?
———-
Seems to me some people have trouble understanding what the word -improbable- actually means.
Put it another way:
if horse race outcomes can’t be predicted why do bookies put odds on horses? Because it is useful Information. Will people use that information sensibly. Probably not.
@Ric Werme
Denigrating the entire justice system of Italy without offering any evidence whatsoever is deeply racist and xenophobic. Italy is a modern democratic country and member of the United Nations, NATO and the G8.
Italy has a transparent and rigorous legal system. It has plenty of checks and balances in place to ensure that justice is served. 21 judges looked at the evidence against Knox and Sollecito and they all concluded that it was overwhelming. Judge Massei wrote a painstakingly detailed report on how the court arrived at its verdict and made it available to the public. Knox and Sollecito are automatically guaranteed two appeals. America and Britain don’t have such a fair and rigorous legal system.
The US State Department and the American Embassy in Rome have monitored the legal proceedings and have found nothing wrong.
I politely suggest you read the Massei report. It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=259
I hope to make you understand what happened last April in L’Aquila.
Let’s start with a weather forecast, just because I’m a meteorologist.
If your local NWS office in Oklaoma forecasts a tornado outbreak for tomorrow and someone outside the NWS tell people that a tornado will hit just that village, what will you do?
A meeting with the main personalities of the NWS to confirm that the righ path of a tornado can’t be predicit a day in advance, so don’t believe to anyone and have a nice day.
Or do you tell people that a tornado path can’t be known in advance by noone but someone could be hit tomorrow?
After Giuliani made his prediction, he who is not a patented geologist, the others overselled the science. The message most people in L’Aquila got was: stay home and don’t worry. But your child is no more alive.
The correct message would have been: we don’t kown if all these small quakes are a sign of something bigger, we don’t think so, but we cannot be sure.
If you live in a house that can’t resist a strong quake, as many old and new building in Italy are, you should have the possibility to decide if to have a vacation or stay there.
Their words made many think that there was no danger at all!
Paolo
P.S. We italians know that we are everything but perfect, but it is always fun to see what some people (much more perfect) think of us 🙂
[snip. Try again, without calling people deniers. ~dbs, mod.]
italian magistrates, prosecutors and judges are a chast of unaccountable, ultrapotent bureaucrats who will be the first on the scene of any disaster looking for someone to bring to court in order to gain power, media coverage, career boost. thats how so many of them got into the parliament and government. no wonder, in italy we are used to these ridicolous stunts. same guys who tried to bring to courd US soldiers and CIA agents, and who keep the political class hostages of their power. they run the country since a referendum eliminated parliament immunity.
If climate scientists can accurately predict the sea level 50 years from now, surely scientists ought to be able to predict an imminent earthquake given they had a few tremors to go on. Where are the computer models when you need them?
What the scientists did that is morally questionable is weigh in with a prediction, at least a “sort-of” prediction of “nothing is happening.” That is the Al Gore impulse. It has nothing to do with science. The goal of science is to understand nature. If other folks want to take the fruits of science and use them to control nature, that is another matter entirely and is totally independent of science. When asked to make predictions based upon the series of tremors, the scientists in question should have said that their science does not enable them to make reliable predictions based upon the events described.
Tried to do just that right here.
Christchurch New Zealand has just suffered a 7.1 with zero deaths. If anyone is charged in Italy it should be builders, building inspectors and those responsible for construction standards
The picture at the top of this story tells where the blame lies in this and Haiti and all the other cities where old unsafe buildings kill people. If anyone is to blame it is local government for not condemning the old buildings which have failed in every strong Italian quake. The new buildings in the upper left corner look undamaged, the old buildings are rubble heaps.
Because I live in Christchurch I’d like to add the following comment about our 7.1 quake this last weekend. Most of the “pre-earthquake proofed” buildings were (past tense) situated within the CBD which was pretty much deserted when the quake struck at 4.35AM NZ time. Christchurch is also built on alluvial plains which seismologists tells us absorb at least some of the jolts so most of the older wooden weatherboard houses swayed and shook but didn’t breakup. We have been having regular and some significantly large after-shocks – ooops just felt a big one that wobbled my desk as I write this. Damn and there go the sirens again.
The local officials want to watch out if they are successful they will have either no seismologists to predict future events, or no tourists or locals because they are all frightened off by the constant string of alarms as the seismologists try to predict something which may or may not happen just to cover their backs if they get it wrong.
It’s a bit like the weather men trying to work out where the hurricanes are or are not going to end up, there are too many variables in the mix to give a definitive answer.
being an Italian geologist, I should agree with Paolo….
Our construction codes are really OLD, and we are facing with active volcanoes, seismic zones (more or less 70% of Italy), alluvial fans, flood plains and so on…
Most of our buildings are really OLD (my high school had foundations from a Roman age previous building…) and NOT safe against seismic waves, but our bureaucrats (we have 4 degrees of government, from the central State to the single municipality) are concerned only with the external architectural shape of them, in a kind of “aestethic rule” that prevents peoples (and local governments) from retrofit them against hearthquakes…
And when you can retrofit them, thanks to the old construction codes, someone does it in an improvised manner.
One of the buildings that collapsed in L’Aquila, killing many young peoples, was the “Home of the Student”, a kind of college-style house for students of the local University; according to some sources, it collapsed because of a solar-powered warming system that had been retrofitted to the building, adding some 150 tons of water (the hot water insulated reservoir) at the top of it, making the structure more prone to damages from horizontally-shaking seismic waves….
Kevin Kilty says:
September 5, 2010 at 10:21 am
As for the “precautionary principle” it would be: “If not sure then don’t open your big mouth” 🙂
Unfortunately it doesn’t happen as GW forecasters have to repay their bosses by predicting catastrophes.
Italian Geologist says:
September 6, 2010 at 5:50 am
I have always wondered: how do you manage to accomodate the new generations in the same old buildings? Which is the secret?, I don’t think you send the elders, like me , prematurely to the hades” 🙂