Project News

OpenQuake course 1st held　

The first lecture of the OpenQuake course was held on July 6th by the Seismic Observation Hazard Group. The course was held for SATREPS Bhutan with the support of Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University and the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED), and the lecturer this time was Dr. Hao, a visiting researcher at NIED and currently living in Vancouver, Canada. The lecture was in remote format for about 1 hour from 10:00 Bhutan time, 13:00 Japan time, and 21:00 Canada time the day before. From the Bhutanese side, the counterparts of the Department of Disaster Management (DDM), the Department of Geology and Mines (DGM), the Department of Engineering Service (DES), and the Department of Culture (DOC) participated.

OpenQuake(OQ) comprised of engine, platform, and tools for a wide range of purposes for disaster risk reduction and management. OQ is worldwide recognized opensource software initialized by the Global Earthquake Model foundation (GEM), a non-profit organization. The lecture introduced the purpose of establishing GEM, its activities, data brought in, hazards and risk assessments in the global level.

The lecture mentioned a lack data in Bhutan, and encouraged individual to challenge OQ to learn and utilize to create Bhutan model. During the Q&A session, OQ functions of hazard and risk assessment, OQ data requirements were also discussed. To become a responsible user of OQ, some pre-requirement knowledges are necessary, such as Statistics and Probability, Fault Modelling, Unix commands, QGIS software. The user is encouraging to utilize the GEM services as provided by https://www.globalquakemodel.org/services (external link).

The Bhutan earthquake risk map will be greatly depended the preparation of the hazard and risk input data. It is hoped that the data collected in this project will eventually be assessed by using Openquake.

Dr. Hao lecturing

Participants hearing the lecture

Dr. Hao closing the lecture

Question-and-Answer session