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Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

From the BBC:

A harrowing 8.9 earthquake hit Japan tonight. The New York Times reports: "A tsunami hit the coast of northeast Japan on Friday in the aftermath of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake about 80 miles offshore. Television images showed waves of more than 12 feet roaring inland. CNN reported that air and land transportation was severely disrupted."

The quake struck at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time just off Honshu, "Japan's most populous island."

An estimated 4 million people are without power. According to BBC, the following tsunami caused "caused extensive damage" with residents trapped inside their buildings. "Japan's TV showed cars, ships and even buildings being swept away" and "wave as high as 6m (20ft)" could hit the coast.

To give you perspective on the gravity of the Japanese earthquake, the Loma Prieta quake measured 6.9 and the Great San Francisco Quake of 1906 measured 7.9. Today's quake is one of the largest five recorded since 1900.

No word yet on number of casualties, which will presumably be high. A tsunami watch is in effect for Hawaii.

A state of emergency has been declared at a nuclear power plant but officials said there were no radiation leaks.

At least 60 people have been killed by the quake, which struck about 400km (250 miles) north-east of Tokyo. The death toll is expected to rise significantly. Some reports quote Japanese police as saying 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the port city of Sendai.

The GCP event was set for 24 hours beginning at 04:00 UTC on 11 March 2011. This includes a period prior to the main temblor. The result is Chisquare 86487.371 on 86400 df, for p = 0.416 and Z = 0.212.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

Although our formal analysis is made using the full network of 65-70 eggs, it is interesting to look at the data from relatively local eggs. In this case, we have an egg in Meiji, Japan, at Meiji University, ID# 1101. Examining the data from this single device, we see a striking deviation away from expectation beginning around the time of the earthquake and persisting to the end of the formally specified event. This is not a formal analysis, but the departure amounts to -2.4 sigma, and would happen about once in 100 randomly selected 24 hour days of data.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

Given such a powerful event, with long-lasting effects as the dimensions of the disaster become more clear, it is worthwhile to look at a longer period of time. The next figure shows another 20 hours. As we saw in the case of the great tsunami in the Indian ocean in 2004, the longer view shows a stronger response than we see in the formal event period.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

It is also useful to look at the data from a different perspective. The next figure shows the odds ratios for the Z-scores over the two days surrounding the main temblor. This procedure uses smoothing to identify concentrations of large deviations. There is a spike at the time of the quake with an odds ratio of about 70 to 1, but it is soon to be dwarfed. As more time passes and the magnitude of the disaster becomes more apparent, we see even greater deviations in the data. The spike 15 or 20 hours after the quake first hit has odds of nearly 250 to 1.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

Here is a second way of visualizing the data around the quake, using a method described by Dean Radin. It looks at the probability against chance (as odds ratios) for the cumulative sum of Z-scores. This method shows a huge weight of deviation near the time of the main temblor, reaching odds of more than 1000 to one against chance.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.

I don't generally try to explain why a result doesn't look the way we would wish, but it may be useful in this case. Many people have asked why the effect isn't commensurate with the scale of the horrific event. Part of the reason may be that natural disasters don't have as strong effects as human caused tragedies, especially at the beginning when fear is the dominant emotion. Later, as compassion takes over, we may see the predicted deviations. As described above, the effects are low level signals in a high noise environment, as if we were looking for a goldfish surfacing amidst the whitecaps of ocean waves.

Motivated by the questions, I have applied other analyses to the data. The normal GCP statistic is the Squared Stouffer's Z representing the network variance. A natural question asks what happens to the unsquared Z, which is effectively a measure of the average meanshift. The next two figures show that measure. The first looks at the formal event period, and can be compared to the first figure above.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

The second shows that same measure over a 5 day period surrounding the quake. It looks like the downward trend (that is, the persistent negative deviation of the mean across the eggs) begins before the quake. We can't claim this is a true precursor to the quake, but ... it may be worth giving the question some attention.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami

Finally we look at the variance among the eggs, using a measure that showed a striking shift during the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001. The figure shows the cumulative deviation of the device variance from its theoretical expectation. The calculation is shown for 7 days of data beginning on March 9 2011, and the time of the huge quake that caused the tsunami on March 11 is marked. For comparison (since we have no normalized statistical criterion) the data for 9/11 are shown using the same calculation. It is clear that the variance increased substantially beginning about the time of the quake.

Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami


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