Our technical response parallels those efforts, and is typical for the US academic community; individual scientists with existing contacts in and working knowledge of the effected region provide seismological field equipment, analysis, and training. Responding to the earthquakes in a timely manner required an almost instantaneous commitment on our part. Within two days after the largest event, IRIS had mobilized instruments and the funding necessary to ship them to the field. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and the Earth Institute (EI), both at Columbia University, promised to “backstop” our effort – in other words, cover our travel and field expenses while we sought external funding for our effort. Both have strong and long-standing commitments to mitigating earthquakes, hazards, and human suffering worldwide, including in East Africa and Malawi. The project would have immediately stalled without this support.
With the LDEO and EI backstop in hand, we sought external funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and USAID, highlighting the unique scientific and outreach opportunities offered by a rapid response to these earthquakes (read our proposal here). USAID characterized the activity as too scientific to be in their purview and declined to fund us. NSF acknowledged a modest scientific benefit, but they described the effort as primarily a humanitarian and outreach response. While NSF agreed to provide some support, the amount available for such short-turnaround projects (via the RAPID program) is very small – enough only to return and recover our instruments.
Technical responses such as this one provide scientific and humanitarian benefits alike and strongly complement the larger response effort. The breadth of the impact should increase their fundability – more bang for the buck. But because of the splintered nature of the US response and funding mechanisms, this breadth can be a detriment to obtaining funding – too scientific to be humanitarian, but too humanitarian to be scientific. In our case, we overcame this quandary only with the strong financial support of our home institution. How many technical response efforts never get off the ground because of this funding uncertainty?