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Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine

I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

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The event called in this report is the Fukushima nuclear accident – 2011 great East‐Japan  earthquake and tsunami. It focuses on the effects of the radiation hazards to a wide range of  populations,  which  includes  the  analyse  on  human  health/risks  and  the  surrounding  environments (ecosystems).

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Most of the partners of the platform (world leading foundations/organisations: e.g. Resilience Network Initiative) have used the tools to increase the access on relevant information in order to assist the citizens/populations that need helps. Furthermore, to protect marginalised communities.

“Anyone can use Ushahidi, but traditionally it has been a tool used by Crisis Responders, Human Rights Reporters, and Citizens & Governments (such as election monitoring or corruption reporters).”

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The object focused in this epidemiological study is the incarcerated group. Whereas the study has focused on the reason why certain group of people incarcerated and therefore increase the amount of drug uses and decrease the health quality. The formation of the incarcerated community has spotted on analyzing few areas that include human races, relevant family incomes and the facilities with health care in both prisons and jails.  

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At the end of the film, the need of more medical centers are suggested as in some of the countries there is no medical center to serve a whole country. Due to the lack of medical center, medical operation cannot be hold long in the area with the overwhelming populations. By sending short-term temporary medical service from foreign countries would not solve the problem at once, as the populations would get some kind of disease overtime. By building more medical centers, medical supplies would maintain in a constant rate so the emergency responders do not have to make decisions based on the supplies left.  

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This report has provided a detail data from many countries that including the states involving  the nuclear activities and the internationally formed organisations to provide technical  information to assist the works. Therefore, the implications of this report to the technical  professionals will be very useful in the research. 

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The functions of the system are built based on a modern PHP stack. The user interface is built with JS, HTML and CSS. Therefore, the development can be supported by the code libraries. And hence it is an open source software, user can customised the structure to match the user habits. Volunteers are also welcome to integrate the system.