by Benjamin Dansby, SCEC Education Program Assistant, USC

Larger imageEPIcenter members.

On July 2, 2009, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) hosted the second Earthquake Education and Public Information Center (EPIcenter) meeting at the University of Southern California. The meeting provided an opportunity for representatives from various organizations to come together and discuss earthquake education and preparedness efforts at their institutions. Current EPIcenters include free-choice learning institutions such as the Rancho Mirage Public Library, the San Bernardino County Museum, UC Riverside, Cal State Los Angeles, Lake Perris State Recreation Area, the California Science Center in Exposition Park, the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, the Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the museums at Balboa Park in San Diego.

One of the key themes of the meeting was to build collaboration between EPIcenters. Many of the EPIcenters participated in The Great Southern California ShakeOut in 2008 and all of them are working together to make The Great California ShakeOut of 2009 even more successful. The meeting provided opportunities to discuss what worked well last year and what can be added or improved upon this year.

EPIcenter members listen to a presentation on the Great California ShakeOut 2009.

Elizabeth Cochran from UC Riverside also gave a presentation on the Quake Catcher Network that she has been developing, which will allow ordinary citizens to participate in monitoring earthquakes through their home computers.

EPIcenter members visit the SCEC USEIT interns.

Additionally, EPIcenter members were given an opportunity to visit the interns in the USEIT (Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology) program. These interns at SCEC are developing software and visualizations to display faults and earthquakes in three dimensions, and could potentially work with the EPIcenters to create visualizations that would be used at those institutions.

The day ended with a discussion of upcoming events and opportunities for collaboration. EPIcenters will be able to work together in the future to share resources and products that will educate and prepare people for earthquakes.