They could use them to better understand the aftermath of quakes and tsunamis in this highly populated yet risky zone, and to validate the flooding models that policymakers use to prepare for future disasters.

Moderna’s Melissa Moore explained why we should be excited about the dawn of mRNA vaccines; the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Christopher Krebs, talked about the cybersecurity issues that pose the biggest threat to our democracy; and Slack's Stewart Butterfield and Salesforce's Bret Taylor told us about how digital-first workplaces will become the norm even when we can return to the office.

High-rise buildings in some parts of Los Angeles may sway four times as much during an earthquake as those in the downtown area, according to a study that reveals new information about how underlying geology transmits a big quake’s power into buildings above.

Voyage leader and NIWA marine geologist Dr Joshu Mountjoy says this is the first time this technology has been used to survey submarine canyons in New Zealand waters and information collected will lead to new understanding relevant to many of the world’s continental margins.

Proactive earthquake alerts will only be in California for now (which already has ShakeAlert and an established data set), and Google says that "over the coming year, you can expect to see the earthquake alerts coming to more states and countries using Android’s phone-based earthquake detection.".

Two International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expeditions to the Hikurangi subduction zone off the east coast of the North Island, undertaken in 2017 and 2018, mark the first time scientists from around the world had studied and directly sampled rocks from the source region of slow slip events using ocean floor scientific drilling methods.

New information about landslides that occur on the seafloor off New Zealand’s east coast will help scientists better understand why and where they happen, and the types of threats they pose.

For the first time the Whakatipu lake floor will be mapped to build a picture of the potential for local tsunami hazards in the future.

To that end, Bhutan embarked on the $1.29 million Improving Resilience to Seismic Risk project funded by the Japan Policy and Human Resources Development (PHRD) Technical Assistance Program to Support Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

When I asked Caltech geologist Brian Wernicke, a giant in the field of global geophysics, if it was possible that Faulds was paying too much attention to the Walker Lane, he replied, quickly and without irony: “Well, it's the most interesting place in the world.” In terms of understanding how continents deform and how seismic hazards relate to plate tectonics, he added, “it's an unparalleled natural laboratory.”.

“If you have good enough data and good enough sensing technologies, such as the seismometer network in California or the hurricane-hardened WeatherFlow anemometer stations on the East Coast, you can get that data and very quickly work out whether someone should be getting paid,” says Samuel Jay Gibson, of the Capital and Resilience Solutions Group at the catastrophe risk modeling firm RMS.

Today, machine learning algorithms can detect over 100 types of cancerous tumors more reliably than a trained human eye. In Guatemala City, images and algorithms were used to locate “soft-story” buildings – buildings at least two stories high that have a structurally weak first floor.

“This study unequivocally demonstrates that earthquake-triggered canyon flushing is the primary process that carves out submarine canyons and delivers coastal sediment to the deep ocean,” says NIWA marine geologist Dr Joshu Mountjoy.

Tsunami warning: Coastal cities at risk of MEGA WAVES sparked by rising sea levels