June

Post date: Jul 6, 2013 8:14:21 PM

It’s been a busy start to the summer at Stanford Earth Sciences! I am assisting my advisor, Anne, in compiling and understanding research papers pertaining to the geophysics of Central Nepal, especially the Kathmandu Valley. The overall goal of her project is to demonstrate how the application of a novel social strategy can motivate seismic safety reform in hundreds of Kathmandu Valley schools.

Specifically, it is proposing an alternative to the age-old strategy of marketing preparedness through showing disaster consequences. Instead, we seek a method that motivates individual actions through others within society. For example, consider a familiar scenario. As residents of Northern California, we’ve all seen the public service announcements about seismic safety. We usually see the infamous Cypress Structure collapse from Loma Prieta, or San Francisco in shambles after the 1906 quake. How effective is this methodology? The unfortunate reality is that many of us have simply become desensitized to it, found such tragedy inevitable, or contrarily, believed it would never happen to us personally. So if such consequence-based marketing doesn’t work, what might? If I go to a friend’s house and see that he has braced all his furniture to the wall, I would find that interesting. Someone like me, of similar interests, has taken pride in protecting himself in the event of an earthquake. Especially if I saw that enough times, it would become the social norm in my mind, and I would certainly do it myself. That may very well be the key to motivating change in Kathmandu. In looking at the actions of others, people can be encouraged to demand change in the city schools.

However, we must first demonstrate the severe seismic risk that the millions living in and around the capital face. I am focusing on studying tectonics, while my partner Snigdha is focusing on the geologic units of the regions. It has been a very interesting challenge so far, and I will summarize my findings in a July post.

I thank Anne for letting me work on this amazing project, and Snigdha for being an amazing lab partner.