Open Science for Fostering Seismologic Science Literacy

Abstract

This paper reports on an attempt to introduce “open science” into the field of seismology to improve disaster literacy in seismology and related fields. The term “open science” has a variety of meanings, but the core idea is of diverse stakeholders “doing science collaboratively.” This study reports on four pieces of action research to improve seismology-related disaster literacy through the idea of “open science,” which focuses on “doing science collaboratively” with the active participation of citizens (non-experts) and researchers (experts). In particular, this study focuses on the “citizen science” perspective because disaster literacy, first and foremost, refers to the disaster literacy of the general public. Specifically, we improved earthquake literacy by operating the Abuyama Earthquake Observatory Science Museum; promoting citizen-participatory earthquake and tsunami evacuation drills by developing and implementing Nige-tore, a smartphone app to support tsunami evacuation drills; promoting the Minna de Honkoku project to decipher historical materials related to natural disasters through citizen involvement; and conducting a trial “open/citizen science”-oriented seismologic-data observation program, the Manten Project, for inland earthquake research.