Subject: what others publish on the Internet

From: [email-masked] (Hans-Martin Adorf)
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 08:58:49 +0100

Earthquake Comments

  by Adam C. Engst <[email-masked]>

  There certainly seems to be plenty of interest in earthquakes and
  the Internet. I received a number of requests to reprint last
  weeks article about earthquakes (TidBITS-261 ), along with a "Nice
  Timing!" note from Carl Bowser of the University of Wisconsin, who
  used the article as a handout about what could be done on the
  Internet for a class in "Computer Applications in the Earth
  Sciences." Here then, are some of the more interesting comments
  and pointers.

Stefan Kukula <[email-masked]> writes:
  Thanks for your description of what you did after your
  earthquake. I was reading TidBITS at work this morning, and
  realized I had one of the affected HP DeskWriters, then read your
  piece, and realized I hadn't any more. In fact, I don't have a
  computer or apartment any more. (Our ten story block has become a
  nine story block.) Having been pretty much smack on the epicentre
  of the Kobe earthquake at the time, and feeling lucky to be alive,
  I'll hope you'll forgive my comment that I think a potential
  shortage of LCD displays is a fairly minor problem compared to the
  rehousing and rebuilding tasks ahead.

  Nevertheless, perhaps such industry repercussions will make people
  pay more attention to just how fragile our world can be. A big
  earthquake in the Silicon Valley part of California could mean
  deep trouble for the computer industry, and such a possibility
  might be a good argument for firms to consider relocating. I can
  see the PR now... "Move to Scotland's 'Silicon Glen' - the
  geologically stable alternative."

  Still, it's nice to be able to write with something other than my
  usual complaints about computer support for overseas users! ("I'd
  like a new tectonic plate; our current one has a design flaw....")

Ian Feldman <[email-masked]> suggested that we also note a Web
  site that's reporting on the effects of the recent terrible
  flooding in Holland.

http://www.hvu.nl/flood/

  Although we don't want to become a disaster reporting service, I
  think it's interesting how the Internet, and the Web in
  particular, has changed the way some of us think about the world.
  Not all that long ago, disasters were something that happened far
  away, and few people heard about them until afterwards. More
  recently, radio and then television brought the latest news and
  images of disaster into many homes, with that momentary horrifying
  image or sound bite that squeezes forth emotion but not
  understanding. Now, with news travelling between individuals on
  the Internet faster than radio and television crews can mobilize,
  and Web sites springing up overnight to gather and present real
  data about a disaster, I think we can start to move beyond that
  instantaneous upwelling of human sympathy to a more rational and
  long-lived understanding of what these events truly mean to the
  inhabitants. [ACE]

Jeremy Crampton <[email-masked]> writes:
  In reference to your earthquake experiences, some of what you did
  (taking USGS data and feeding it to the Xerox PARC Map Server) has
  been set up automatically by folks in the Department of Geography
  at Edinburgh.

http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/quakes/quakes.html

Richard Smith <[email-masked]> writes:
  My colleague, Jim Macinnes <[email-masked]> has rigged up a web
  page that lists the latest geophysical disturbances in several
  regions. No knowledge of Finger or arcane reading skills are
  needed as the data is nicely formatted and presented. The latitude
  and longitude coordinates are turned into hypertext links by some
  more "perl-of-hand" and linked to the Xerox PARC Map Server.

  All in all it is a smooth and elegant solution. The work has been
  undertaken as a joint effort by the Centre for Policy Research on
  Science and Technology and the David Lam Centre for International
  Communication, both at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The
  programming credit goes to Jim, though.

http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/quake.html

Jozsef Urmos <[email-masked]> writes:
  There's no need to manually feed the earthquake coordinates info
  to the Xerox PARC Map Server to get a map showing the epicenter
  location. You might try

http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/cgi-bin/quakes

  to get maps of epicentral locations generated automatically from
  the Xerox Map Server. When you connect to these pages they
  initially finger the Earthquake Information Center to get the
  latest list of quakes and then generate a page where you can
  select any of those recent quakes to give you a map showing the
  quake's location.

  I think this is probably one of the best (and neatest) uses of the
  net. I'm impressed by the manner in which several different
  information sources can be creatively combined to give something
  so much greater than any of the parts.

Mary Corman <[email-masked]> wrote to pass on the URL of
  an earthquake information page that has links to just about
  everything you could want, seismologically speaking.

http://www.geophys.washington.edu/seismosurfing.html