We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Production of Earthquake Emergencies: technoscientific earthquake early warning in a social and material world.
- Authors
Reddy, Elizabeth
- Abstract
In order to prevent injury and save lives, earthquake early warning systems like Mexico's public Sistema de Alerta Sísmica Mexicano (sasmex) must pair timely, effective hazard detection with effective alert dissemination to responsive users. The alert makes seismicity meaningful to its users in new ways. This article draws on contemporary sts concerns with how materials come to be meaningful in order to reckon with how an earthquake alert comes to be a kind of earthquake emergency. Engaging ethnographically with an alert which did not presage violent shaking, and subsequent public discussion of its effects, I argue for taking the social production of emergency seriously. By highlighting responses to and potential effects of this earthquake emergency, I push back against simple techno-optimism to highlight the necessity of public education to support potentially life-saving tools like the Sistema de Alerta Sismica Mexicano. Making emergencies into opportunities for Mexico City residents may require introducing new kinds of public outreach and education about not just the alert, but about the possibilities and limits of technoscientific disaster prevention.
- Subjects
MEXICO; EARTHQUAKE hazard analysis; EARTHQUAKE prediction; EARTHQUAKES; SOIL vibration; ETHNOGRAPHIC analysis
- Publication
Revista Iberoamericana de Comunicación, 2016, Issue 30, p17
- ISSN
1665-1677
- Publication type
Article