How Understanding Baseball Can Improve Earthquake Predictions
Sunday, November 1, 2015 - 10:10
in Earth & Climate
Major League Baseball can help understand why maps used to predict shaking in future earthquakes often do poorly. Earthquake hazard maps use assumptions about where, when, and how big future earthquakes will be to predict the level of shaking. The results are used in designing earthquake-resistant buildings. However, as the study's lead author, earth science and statistics graduate student Edward Brooks, explains "sometimes the maps do well, and sometimes they do poorly. In particular, the shaking and thus damage in some recent large earthquakes was much larger than expected." read more