{"id":418022,"date":"2021-04-21T12:52:10","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcwatch&p=418022"},"modified":"2021-04-30T13:49:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T20:49:25","slug":"strong-quake-powerful-analysis","status":"publish","type":"arcwatch","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcwatch\/strong-quake-powerful-analysis","title":{"rendered":"Strong Quake, Powerful Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1172,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10492,10392,10412],"tags":[157432,151642,209772,473962,473972],"arcwatch_issues":[473782],"class_list":["post-418022","arcwatch","type-arcwatch","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcgis-earth","category-arcgis-online","category-arcgis-pro","tag-arcgis","tag-earthquake","tag-esri","tag-japan","tag-tohoku","arcwatch_issues-may-2021","arcwatch_sections-the-headlines"],"acf":{"short_description":"Take a look back at the T\u014dhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and see the new GIS technology you can use to analyze these types of events. ","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Examine the 2011 T\u014dhoku, Japan, Earthquake and Tsunami with GIS <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIt is still one of the clearest memories I have of any of the hundreds of work trips I took over my career: My colleagues and I, along with over 10,000 others, had just arrived in San Francisco, California, for the annual meeting of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA). It was the evening of March 11, 2011.\r\n\r\nAs the night wore on and we were setting up our Esri space in the exhibit hall in a very large convention center, reports began to flow in about the terrible events that were currently unfolding in Japan: A magnitude 9 earthquake had struck northeastern Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami that caused thousands of deaths. It came to be known as the T\u014dhoku earthquake and tsunami. It seemed almost too horrible to believe."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":422332,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":"https:\/\/community.esri.com\/t5\/video\/gallerypage\/video-id\/6237282030001"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Even though all of us staffing the Esri exhibit had been studying natural hazards and teaching others about them for years, the photos we saw of cities besieged by waves\u2014this was before streaming video on phones was common\u2014were of heights and extents far larger than we had ever seen before. Suddenly, all the challenges I was experiencing in life seemed to pale in comparison to what people were dealing with on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.\r\n\r\nWhen all was said and done, T\u014dhoku was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan and the fourth most powerful in the world since modern record keeping began in 1900. According to some estimates, more than 20,000 people were killed, injured, or missing, and close to 500,000 people were forced to evacuate. In addition, a nuclear power plant meltdown triggered a nuclear emergency. The economic loss from this event was estimated at $360 billion, easily making it the costliest natural hazard the world had ever experienced.\r\n\r\nOn that night, none of us knew these figures yet, but our hearts went out to the victims. And we immediately shifted the main focus of our Esri exhibit to show educators how they and their students could use GIS to examine the earthquake and tsunami and other devastating natural hazards in science education.\r\n\r\nWe believed that spatial thinking and analysis through GIS was a method that could be used to study any aspect of our dynamic Earth, at any scale, and across any temporal span. The same is true a decade later. We used what we had available to us in 2011\u2014real-time feeds from the QuakeFeed<\/a> app (which still exists and is still excellent), which you can download from the Apple App Store. Back then, you could also map the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) real-time spreadsheets of earthquake epicenters, magnitudes, and depths.\r\n\r\nSince ArcGIS Online<\/a> was just coming into existence, we were able to show a few of these layers using this new tool and also in ArcGIS Desktop 9. Even then, educators were amazed at the capabilities at their fingertips. This ArcWatch<\/em> article, \"Understanding Japan's Earthquakes from a Geospatial Perspective<\/a>,\" describes these tools.\r\n\r\nFast-forward 10 years: You now have an even more amazing variety of 2D and 3D mapping tools to work with including ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Earth<\/a>, ArcGIS Pro<\/a>, and Scene Viewer<\/a>. You also can access authoritative geographic content from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World<\/a> and tutorials and lessons in the Esri Community space,<\/a> GeoInquiries<\/a>, and the Learn ArcGIS lesson library<\/a>. The tools, content, and lessons help you to examine what has transpired over the past decade in the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami and in locations impacted by other natural hazards around the world."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":422382,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"In this video<\/a>, you will see how you can use tools in ArcGIS Online to study the T\u014dhoku earthquake and tsunami, including the devastation suffered by the residents of the city of Rikuzentakata, which sits on Hirota Bay. The city, which was home to more than 23,000 people before the earthquake and tsunami, was almost completely destroyed, with every building under three stories high completely flooded.\r\n\r\nYou can use a wide variety of basemaps in ArcGIS Online, including oceans, satellite imagery, street maps, and shaded relief, to examine changes at a small scale, including to local neighborhoods and coastlines. Measure tools in ArcGIS Online can be effectively used to learn about scale and distances.\r\n\r\nFor example, you can measure the distance between the northeast coast of Japan and the boundary of the Pacific Plate, along which the earthquake that resulted in the tsunami occurred. The Earth's plate boundaries are often located where earthquakes occur. When these boundaries are added using the add button in ArcGIS Online, they show Japan's position straddling at least two major and three smaller plates."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":422412,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"You can use the same tools to measure the following:\r\n