USAID-USGS EARTHQUAKE DISASTER ASSISTANCE TEAM: COLLABORATING WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS TO REDUCE EARTHQUAKE RISK WORLDWIDE

The Earthquake Disaster Assistance Team (EDAT) strives to assist foreign partners, generally in developing countries, with seismic hazard identification and monitoring, working in the background to support local scientists and officials as they take the lead in studying and responding to geologic hazards in their respective countries.

EDAT scientists support local experts by sharing knowledge and methods. In exchange, EDAT scientists who engage in international capacity building and response activities broaden their scientific and cultural perspectives and develop important relationships with international colleagues. EDAT has ongoing or recently completed projects in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Indonesia, Nepal, and Myanmar on a range of topics including cellphone-based earthquake early warning, monitoring network improvements, etc. EDAT also supports global project work on real-time earthquake products and aftershock forecasting. EDAT scientists responded to the 2010 magnitude 7.0 Haiti earthquake, the 2015 magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, and others.

EDAT draws scientists from across the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) with specialties such as paleoseismology and ground rupture, network seismology, geological engineering and ground failure, strong-motion instrumentation, geodesy, seismic hazard assessment, tsunami source characterization, education and outreach, etc. EDAT scientists work closely with the Landslide Disaster Assistance Team (LDAT) on earthquake-generated landslide issues.

During Fiscal Year 2020, EDAT scientists and their partners reported training 1,457 individuals, and activities are estimated to have benefitted a minimum of 514 million people across the seven countries with active EDAT projects, in addition to global efforts.

EDAT was co-founded by USGS and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance USAID/BHA) beginning in 2009. In addition to EDAT, USAID/BHA also supports LDAT and the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP). Together, these three bilateral activities provide data and scientific expertise to inform international humanitarian assistance activities related to geologic hazards.