To accurately map the South Napa earthquake for this study, Barnhart and a team of researchers created a complex comparison scenario. "On an international scale, it dramatically reduces the time between when an earthquake happens, when buildings start to fall down, and when aid starts to show up," Barnhart says. The earthquake struck right under the capital city of Port Au Prince, killing up to 316,000 people, depending on estimates, and costing billions of dollars in aid. The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 is the perfect example for the usefulness of this kind of tool, Barnhart says. The study, "Geodetic Constraints on the 2014 M 6.0 South Napa Earthquake" published in the March/April edition of Seismological Research Letters, is the first USGS example showing that GPS and satellite readings can be used as a tool to shorten earthquake response times.Īnd while information about an earthquake's impact might be immediately known in an area such as southern California, Barnhart says the technique will be most useful in the developing world. "By having the 3D knowledge of the earthquake itself, we can make predictions of the ground shaking, without instruments to record that ground shaking, and then can make estimates of what the human and infrastructure impacts will be- in terms of both fatalities and dollars," Barnhart says.
The map was made without using traditional rapid response instruments, such as seismometers, which may not afford the same level of detail for similar events around the globe.
New research from the University of Iowa, along with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), shows that GPS and satellite data can be used in a real-time, coordinated effort to fully characterize a fault line within 24 hours of an earthquake, ensuring that aid is delivered faster and more accurately than ever before.Įarth and Environmental Sciences assistant professor William Barnhart used GPS and satellite measurements from the magnitude 6.0 South Napa, California earthquake on August 24, 2014, to create a three-dimensional map of how the ground surface moved in response to the earthquake.