What do librarians talk about at parties?

Information resources. (And movies and books....).

Last night I learned from the geographer spouse of a classmate about DigitalGlobe. It's a bit like TerraServer, which I've discussed previously, in that it provides satellite photos. TerraServer is more comprehensive but DigitalGlobe is more news-oriented. So, DigitalGlobe has satellite photos about the tsunami. I found the Banda Aceh Image Analysis and the Sri Lanka Image Analysis--both of which are PDF files--useful for understanding the impact.

Yesterday's entry, highlighting the rapidly available information about earthquakes, made me wonder why we weren't able to provide a warning of a tsunami. NPR apparently wondered as well and asked the USGS National Earthquake Information Center about it. Here's the story. Mostly, the answer is that we don't know how to tell that an earthquake generated a tsunami--that requires a completely separate detection system.

Such a detection system exists in the world, but not in the Indian Ocean. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, run by the National Weather Service, detects tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean. The About Tsunamis page at that site has detailed factual information and some historical data. There is even more information available through the link to the International Tsunami Information Center. The historical events page presents a list of pdf files that are well-written documents with maps and photos.     #

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