Summary

Information provided by affected people who have felt an earthquake can help support more effective response by global earthquake responders and fill gaps in scientific understanding of an event. Here we perform an analysis of the USGS “Did You Feel It?” (DYFI) product, a tool to crowdsource “felt reports” of shaking intensity, to understand user-interaction with the product. This was conducted through a web analysis focusing on how users access DYFI, as well as through an inference model using Tobit regression on a panel dataset, in which a country’s response rate to DYFI is predicted. The panel dataset built for this model combines physical earthquake parameters from the USGS with various socioeconomic parameters from the World Bank and the Central Intelligence Agency for 151 countries between 2009-2020. The web analysis results indicate that users overwhelmingly access DYFI via mobile device. Exploratory visualizations using the panel data revealed correlations between a country’s response rate and average shaking intensity, as well as their gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Results from the inference model confirm that socioeconomic parameters, like primary language spoken and GDP per capita, in addition to physical earthquake parameters, have a significant effect on a country’s contribution to DYFI. Overall, these results support investing resources toward updating the design and communication of DYFI for improved performance on mobile devices and increasing language accessibility to boost responses in regions of the world that both lack seismic station coverage and have historically lacked DYFI data due to language or other factors.