The Pacific Northwest boasts an extensive network of more than 600 seismic monitoring stations that help researchers track tectonic and volcanic phenomena, including earthquakes. This data provides key insights into regional faults and feeds into early warning systems, which can give a community precious moments to prepare before a natural disaster strikes. A significant threat to this region, however, sits miles offshore, where the Juan de Fuca plate is subducting beneath the North American plate, forming the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Monitoring activity at ocean floor faults is challenging, and the existing methods don’t often yield enough data for detailed analyses. To overcome this hurdle, researchers are experimenting with a technique called Distributed Acoustic Sensing, or DAS, that involves measuring ocean bottom vibrations with fiber optic cables, which line the ocean floor for global telecommunications. Recent advances enable researchers to collect data from live cables and use artificial intelligence to capture distant earthquakes that would otherwise escape notice.

In a recent study, 91̽�� researchers tapped into the Ocean Observatory Initiative’s Regional Cabled Array, which spans the offshore plate boundary and transmits data via fiber optic cable. Unlike previous experiments that relied on offline or “dark fibers” for data collection, this new study demonstrates that DAS technology can operate without interfering with the OOI network.

The researchers February 28 in Seismological Research Letters.

“What we created is the starting point of any earthquake analysis,” said co-author , a 91̽��associate professor in the Earth and space sciences department. “Once our AI algorithm enhances the data, we can actually use the wiggles to do science.”

The fiber optic cable network caught researchers’ attention in the last decade, when they realized its potential for recording solid Earth data. The cables transmit bits of information across great distances in the form of photons, or particles of light. A sensor —��called an interrogator — sends a pulse of light down the cable, but imperfections in the core sometimes cause light to deflect back toward the signal’s origin.

Disturbances near the cable can knock the deflected particles off course, and when they arrive back at the origin, researchers plot their path to locate the disturbance.

“When the earthquake is small or faraway, the energy on the cable is relatively low compared to the ocean, and the signal gets buried in background noise,” said co-author, a former 91̽��postdoctoral researcher in the Earth and space sciences department who is now a seismologist at Rice University.

, 91̽��researchers developed an algorithm that isolates the signal and amplifies it over the background noise by as much as 2.5 times. All they have to do is let the algorithm explore the data and it will learn how to recognize the signal — in this case, an earthquake. The researchers used data from 285 earthquakes that occurred in Alaska’s Cook Inlet in 2023 as the training dataset.

“A well-trained model will identify earthquakes that the human eye cannot see,” Shi said. “This marks the first step toward a general-purpose foundational model for earthquakes”

To confirm that it would also filter data collected elsewhere, the researchers validated their model at the test site in Oregon, using a live cable. Previous experiments, including the test-run in Alaska, have sourced data from inactive cables, or dark fibers.

In Oregon, the researchers demonstrated that they could collect high-quality data while the cables were transmitting data. They plugged into the Regional Cabled Array, which contains fiber optic cables, and tuned the algorithm to the frequency of seismic waves coming from small- to medium-sized earthquakes far away. The researchers then traced the signal back to specific regions of the subduction zone and pinpointed the precise location of an earthquake.

“It’s the closest we can get to where the action is,” Denolle said. “So for addressing scientific questions, for monitoring, and for early tsunami and earthquake warnings, it’s our best shot.”

The system is also portable, requiring just a modest amount of computing power to operate.

The recent experiment in Oregon lasted just 3 days and produced large volumes of high-quality data, arguably more than the team knows what to do with, Denolle added. Their challenge now is figuring out how to manage the data. Both datasets were published free to access, and the one from Alaska is the largest single-site data of its kind. The team is now in the process of negotiating permanent placements for their monitoring system and exploring collaborations.

“This is the future,” Denolle said. “We’re going to understand plate tectonics by studying small earthquakes and this system gives us unprecedented access to that data.”

Additional co-authors on this paper are , a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth and space sciences department; , an assistant professor in the Earth and space sciences department; , a professor in the oceanography department; a professor in the oceanography department and director of the Ocean Observatory Initiatives Regional Cabled Array and , a research coordinator in Earth and space sciences.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 91̽��Geohazard Initiative and Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks.

For more information, contact Shi at qibins@uw.edu and Denolle at mdenolle@uw.edu.

The earthquake that rocked Alaska for close to five minutes on March 27, 1964, in U.S. history. It registered a magnitude of 9.2 on the Richter scale and generated a tsunami that killed people as far south as California. The earthquake also changed the nature of the land surrounding its epicenter near Prince William Sound.

Now, researchers from the 91̽��, led by , an assistant professor of oceanography at UW, the University of Rhode Island and the Desert Research Institute are traveling to Anchorage and the Copper River Delta to study marshes that formed in the years following the earthquake. Few geomorphologists have been to this region, and no one has compared the Alaskan marshes to those in more temperate regions. The ecological implications are significant for local wildlife and Alaskan communities.

Valentine has spearheaded similar interdisciplinary projects at the Willapa salt marsh in Washington with the goal of understanding how the ecosystem is adapting to climate change. In Alaska, she will co-lead a team of five early career researchers, and they will capture video and photos throughout their trip.

Valentine answered a few questions about her work for the occasional series “In the Field,” which highlights 91̽��field efforts.

Tell us about the trip. Where are you going and why?

Kendall Valentine: We are heading to two primary areas – Anchorage and the Copper River Delta – to investigate salt marsh morphodynamics, which is another way of saying landscape-scale changes. We want to understand what happens along the coast after large seismic events.

The 1964 Alaska earthquake lifted the mudflats upward by several meters, creating a suitable environment for marsh vegetation where there wasn’t one before. Marshes rapidly formed, and rough estimates indicate that one to three meters of marsh sediments have accumulated in these areas since. Our understanding of how marshes form and function is based on slow-moving landscapes on passive margins, or places that don’t experience earthquakes. Studying these sites in Alaska will allow us to re-envision marsh dynamics.

The Copper River Delta is also one of the largest deltas in North America, but it is grossly understudied. Deltas form when fast moving water, such as a river, meets a slower body of water, like the sea. Fresh water, saltwater and mud all mix, which creates a dynamic environment and unique habitats. And, as the mud settles, it traps carbon.

What do you and your team hope to learn?

KV: High-latitude wetlands like these are experiencing rapid changes as sea levels rise, permafrost thaws and seasonal ice cover shifts. Erosion rates are increasing, which will influence the landscape and rates of carbon sequestration. These wetlands are critical for wildlife, coastline protection, trapping pollutants, managing nutrient distribution and storing carbon, but there is a real dearth of information about their geomorphology and ecology. We are pioneering the study of seasonally thawed, tectonically active marshes. Researchers have reported a “staggering lack of information” on shorelines at high latitudes, despite their abundance. These often-remote sites are hard to access, working conditions can be harsh and there are few cities nearby. We will be taking an airboat to remote locations to collect core samples and analyze carbon storage, sediment accumulation rates and more.

We hypothesize that carbon storage in high-latitude Alaskan marshes is driven by tectonic history, and we will explore the local carbon dynamics and note how plant populations have changed and marsh geography has evolved. Changes to the marsh could threaten infrastructure, coastal communities and cultural traditions and cost the state billions of dollars in maintenance and repairs.

Who else is going?

KV: I am going with , a graduate student in at UW;, an assistant professor in oceanography at the University of Rhode Island; , a graduate student in her lab Erin Peck’s lab; and , a postdoctoral researcher at the Desert Research Institute. My portion of this project is funded by the Quaternary Research Center here at UW.

We will also venture out into the field with some local partners. Ryan Choi, a vegetation and wetland ecologist in the at the University of Alaska Anchorage�� will join us, and his group has been very supportive. He will be exploring beaver impacts at the same sites.

We are also partnering with the U.S. Forest Service at the Chugach National Forest, who will provide field support (such as boats and bear protection) for the Copper River Delta work.

What do you enjoy about doing field work that might not occur to most people?

KV: What I love most about field work is connecting with the landscape. Marshes are very flat and wide. When you stand in one, particularly like the ones in Alaska – or other places I’ve worked, such as Louisiana – you start to understand how small people really are on this earth.

I love the squelch of the mud under my feet and the rotten egg smell it gives off. I actually wear scuba booties as my field shoes whenever it is safe so that I can feel the ground beneath me. There is so much you can sense about the marsh that is hard to capture in discrete samples and computer modeling.

Is there anything you find surprising or enlightening about doing field work, in general?

KV: Another part of field work that has changed the way I think about science is talking to the people who live on these landscapes. I’ve worked on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts of the U.S. and each of these landscapes differ, as do the local issues and personalities. And yet, these communities share a certain kinship.

They face similar challenges and rely on their relationships with the land – from Cajuns in Louisiana to oyster growers in Willapa, to Indigenous peoples in Bristol Bay. Because their lives are truly tied to the land, the local people teach me things about the place that I could not glean from studying scientific papers or samples. Being in the field where I can listen to the stewards of the land gives me a greater appreciation for the data we collect, a reason to pursue the science and a deeper understanding of the processes that have shaped it.

For more information, contact Kendall Valentine at kvalent@uw.edu

The vast majority of earthquakes strike inside the , a string of volcanoes and tectonic activity that wraps around the coastlines of the Pacific Ocean. But when an earthquake hits, the areas that experience the strongest shaking aren’t always the places that suffer the greatest damage.

Take the massive , which caused extensive damage in Taiwan in the fall of 1999 and killed more than 2,400 people. The distribution of damage followed an uneven pattern: Deaths caused by the earthquake were concentrated not in densely populated city centers, but in those cities’ suburbs and outer fringes. A similar pattern has occurred following earthquakes in China, Chile and Nepal.

More than two decades later, researchers at the 91̽�� have identified a hidden factor behind what they call ‘suburban syndrome’ — migration. Workers from small, rural communities often move into the outer edges of cities, which offer greater economic opportunities but often have low-quality housing that is likely to suffer greater damage during an earthquake. The risk grows even more when migrants come from low-income or tribal villages.

The findings, , suggest that emergency management organizations should pay greater attention to migration and housing quality when developing disaster mitigation and response plans.

91̽��News spoke with lead author , an assistant professor of environmental & occupational health sciences and of urban planning, to discuss ‘suburban syndrome,’ how migration can amplify disparities in a disaster’s impact, and what U.S. officials can learn from a Taiwanese disaster.

Your work on this study builds on an existing model that assesses earthquake risk by considering migration patterns and the movement of vulnerable populations. What does the existing model miss, and why is it important to fill those gaps?����

Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen: This risk-assessment model has been used by many organizations internationally and in the United States. For example, FEMA uses a similar risk model to assess populations exposed to hazards, vulnerabilities and potential disaster impacts. They typically do a comprehensive risk assessment geographically within states and counties, identify areas with potential larger impacts, and then draft a preparedness plan.

In United States, temporary domestic migrants and undocumented immigrants don’t always officially register in government systems. One common reason is the fear of deportation or other legal repercussions. And so, when a government agency like FEMA allocates resources for disaster preparedness or recovery, relying on registered population data can lead to an underestimate of the support required in certain areas.

In Taiwan, our study case, many migrant workers moving from rural to urban areas don’t update their registered residence. They still have their registration back in their hometown, like in a tribal area. It just doesn’t make sense to re-register, because they might have multiple jobs within a single year in different places. To minimize expenses, some workers look for the lowest possible rent, and their rental housing might not be officially registered either. Those could be informal housing structures, like a metal floor added on top of a concrete building, which don’t comply with safety regulations. The informality of this process can help lower their cost of living, but can also leave them more vulnerable to disasters.

How did you get started in this research?��

TKC: I’ll share my personal story, but I also want to acknowledge my co-authors for their years of work in risk assessments. For me, it started back in 2010, when I volunteered in a tribal area of Taiwan teaching computer skills. This provided bigger lessons for me than anything I could’ve taught them. I learned how teenagers often move from their tribal areas downhill to nearby cities to take construction jobs during the off-crop seasons. Those jobs pay more than farm work, but they’re also very physically demanding and often lack worker protections like job security and health insurance. Seeing that put a seed in my mind.��

When I was a master’s student, a team from the National Earthquake Center and Academia Sinica in Taiwan was working on a risk assessment of the Chi-Chi earthquake using the exposure, vulnerability and hazard framework. They had already published a fundamental , and reached out to me to develop an extended study by incorporating spatial statistics. That collaboration eventually evolved into the study in this paper.��

The COVID-19 pandemic also shaped this study. I came across news about how migrant workers were stuck in urban fringe areas of India. Because of the lockdown, they weren’t able to continue their work, and their crowded living conditions left them at even greater risk during the pandemic. I started to wonder: How can we shift from a pure statistical model to something more meaningful? How can we bring migration into the center of the discussion?��

The final push came from colleagues’ work at the UW. I’ve noticed initiatives for undocumented students and research efforts around environmental justice and health equity. For example, my co-author ’s research on migrant worker’s health was particularly motivating. We read and wrote back and forth to refine the framing and discussion in this paper. ��

How did you incorporate migration data into a larger earthquake-risk model, and what did you find?

TKC: At the time of the Chi-Chi earthquake in the late 1990s, we didn’t have any detailed migration data. Today, new research uses mobile phone signals to track people, but such data wasn’t available back then. So we adapted the — a model widely used to predict human migration — to estimate migration flow and used it as a new way to estimate migrants from low-income and tribal areas. This provided new variables to incorporate into the large risk model.��

Most of our findings are supportive of previous studies, where we can see, logically, if there’s stronger ground movement, there are likely to be more fatalities. That’s a very straightforward way of thinking of how disasters can happen. However, it’s not just a physical story. We also confirm that in areas where incomes are lower, there are more fatalities. Income is a known risk factor in the vulnerability theory. What’s unique in this study is that we tested whether an increase in migration flows leads to an increase in fatalities, and we found that to be true.��

Tell me about the migration model. What is it estimating?��

TKC: We applied the radiation model and adapted it to measure different migration populations. The fundamental idea of the radiation model comes from a simple model called the . In this context, gravity refers to the idea that larger populations have a stronger “pull” on people in nearby communities. The model assumes that, for a place, the number of people who want to migrate to nearby cities depends on the population size of those cities. Larger cities tend to attract more people.����

If the distance is too far, then it costs too much to travel, so the model will predict fewer migrants. But if the city is closer, or even far away but has a very large population, it becomes a more attractive destination, leading to greater migration flow.����

The radiation model builds on these principles and adds another layer. It considers competitors along the way. In other words, migration flow may also be influenced by other cities or opportunities that lie between the starting point and the destination.��

At first glance, it seems obvious that greater migration would lead to higher fatalities in a given area, just because there are more people present when disaster strikes. Is that the primary driver, or are there other factors at play?����

TKC: Logically, if there are more people, and the percentage of fatalities is equal, then there should be more people dying from a specific event. But we found it’s not just about population numbers. There are two additional factors: When migrant workers are from areas with lower incomes, or when they are from tribal areas, those factors significantly contribute to higher fatalities in the places they migrate to.��

Our hypothesis is that it’s about housing safety. Migrant workers tend to move to cities, and when cities are more expensive, affluent workers might be able to secure housing that offers better protection against disasters. However, workers from tribal or low-income areas tend to settle in urban fringe zones where affordable housing options might not meet safety standards, making them more vulnerable to earthquakes.

Why did you choose to study this earthquake from 1999 in particular?����

TKC: The research team that invited me to work on this project was interested in the Chi-Chi earthquake, partly because it was one of the most disastrous in Taiwan’s history. And even 20 years later, there’s still a conference focused on the Chi-Chi earthquake that brings domestic and international researchers to talk about it.

How widely applicable are your findings? Could they help us better understand hazards in other earthquake-prone areas of the world, like, say, the Pacific Northwest?����

TKC: It’s important to consider this risk assessment as a tool for preparedness for future hazards. When the next earthquake occurs, migrant communities will likely face elevated impacts if housing safety policies do not improve.

I believe the migration component is universally important, even outside Taiwan. There has always been a paradox, a structural dilemma of disaster governance: Because migrants are often invisible, they suffer from little support. But making them visible can sometimes lead to exclusion and discrimination. This model represents migrants in a geographic sense rather than identifying every person individually through government surveillance, which could address this challenge. By protecting anonymity while still accounting for migrant populations, the model might help ensure their needs are considered in housing safety and resource allocation.

Co-authors on this study include Diana Ceballos of the 91̽��Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences; Kuan-Hui Elaine Lin of National Taiwan Normal University, Thung-Hong Lin of Academia Sinica in Taiwan; and Gee-Yu Liu and Chin-Hsun Yeh of the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taiwan.

For more information, contact Chen at kthchen@uw.edu.

The 91̽�� is a lead partner on a new multi-institution earthquake research center based at the University of Oregon that the National Science Foundation announced Sept. 8 will receive $15 million over five years to study the Cascadia subduction zone and bolster earthquake preparedness in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center, or CRESCENT, will be the first center of its kind in the nation focused on earthquakes at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another.

The center will unite scientists studying the possible impacts of a major earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone, an offshore tectonic plate boundary that stretches more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from southern British Columbia to Northern California. The center will advance earthquake research, foster community partnerships, and diversify and train the next generation geosciences work force.

“The main goal of the center is to bring together the large group of geoscientists working in Cascadia to march together to the beat of a singular drum,” said center director at the University of Oregon. “The center organizes us, focuses collaboration and identifies key priorities, rather than these institutions competing.”

CRESCENT includes researchers from 16 institutions around the United States in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The leadership team includes investigators from the UW, Oregon State University and Central Washington University.

The Cascadia subduction zone has a long history of spurring large earthquakes, but scientists have only started to realize its power within the last few decades. Research shows that the fault is capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude-9.0 or greater — and communities along the U.S. West Coast are ill-prepared for a quake this powerful.

Such an event would set off a cascade of deadly natural hazards in the Cascadia region, from tsunamis to landslides. It could cause buildings and bridges to collapse, disrupt power and gas lines, and leave water supplies inaccessible for months.

CRESCENT’s work can help mitigate that damage. Scientists will use the latest technology — including high-performance computing and artificial intelligence — to understand the complex dynamics of a major subduction zone earthquake. They will gather data and develop tools to better forecast specific local and regional impacts from a quake. That knowledge will help communities to better prepare, by improving infrastructure and nailing down more informed emergency plans.

Valerie Sahakian and Amanda Thomas are co-lead investigators at the University of Oregon.

“Modeling the shaking from California to Canada is a gigantic endeavor,” Sahakian said. “The center enables us to make bigger strides in models, products, and lines of research, to work with engineers to create better building codes and actionable societal outcomes.”

Subduction zones in the U.S. are understudied compared to other kinds of faults, and create distinctive earthquake dynamics that still aren’t fully understood, Melgar said. So the lessons learned from CRESCENT’s work could also be applied to subduction zones in Alaska, the Caribbean and around the world.

Community collaboration will be a major part of the center’s work. The CRESCENT team will work with communities impacted by hazards, regularly soliciting their input to guide research priorities. And they’ll build connections with public agencies, tribal groups, and private industry, so that scientific advances from the center will get translated into community action and policy.

The center will also work to increase diversity in geosciences and train the next generation of geoscientists in the latest technologies. For example, it will engage with minority-serving and tribal high schools to raise interest in and create pathways to geoscience careers, and provide fieldwork stipends and year-round paid research assistantships to support undergraduate students.

, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the 91̽��and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, leads the effort at the UW.

“This NSF Center will be a game-changer for earthquake research in the Pacific Northwest; it will have direct, real-world public safety consequences for policy and planning,” said Tobin, who holds the Paros Endowed Chair in Seismology and Geohazards and serves as Washington’s state seismologist.

“Initial CRESCENT efforts include identifying key faults — both on land and under the sea — that present earthquake and tsunami hazard, measuring and modeling movements of the crust that could show us where earthquake strain is building, and much more.”

, a research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, will lead the working group studying seismic activity and , the more gradual movements along a fault.

“The end goal is to have a community-driven model that describes all of the tectonic structures of Cascadia,” Crowell said. “The objective of CRESCENT is about creating systematic and foundational community science, adapting the best techniques and methods available for use by the seismic community in our region. It will change the process of how we do this science.”

Also initially involved from the 91̽��are , an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences; , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences; and , a professor of oceanography who holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks.

The center will include staff at the U.S. Geological Survey, including affiliate 91̽��faculty members , and , and members of the UW-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which will continue to perform real-time monitoring and communication of seismic risks in the region.

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu or 206-543-6790, Crowell at crowellb@uw.edu and Melgar at dmelgarm@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3488.

Adapted from a University of Oregon press release.

Other CRESCENT participating institutions are:

Cal Poly Humboldt

Cedar Lake Research Group

EarthScope Consortium

Portland State University

Purdue University

Smith College

Stanford University

University of California – San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of North Carolina-Wilmington

Virginia Tech

Washington State University

Western Washington University

Harold Tobin is director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. Tobin studies tectonic plate boundaries with a focus on how faults work and the conditions inside them that lead to earthquakes. He also serves as Washington state’s seismologist.

“This region along the East Anatolian Fault has a well-known history of seismic activity, and it had been identified by Turkish as a place of high seismic hazard,” Tobin said. “However, its known history does not include earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above since seismometers existed to measure them, though historic records indicate earthquakes of up to magnitude 7.4 have occurred. The scale and size of this magnitude 7.8 quake and the one that followed are both larger than what was most likely anticipated. The fact that there was a second large and damaging quake, the magnitude 7.5 that occurred about nine hours later, is not unprecedented globally, but is very uncommon, especially at this size.

“It is not typical for a rupture on one fault to trigger a slip on another fault, but it’s also not that uncommon. For example, the , also clearly had slip along two different faults.

“The surprising size of the two earthquakes and the length of the fault zone makes them very remarkable events. We have seen very, very few on-land, strike-slip fault earthquakes as large as this in the past century, anywhere. For comparison, the San Andreas Fault in California has not had a comparable quake since the . The only other U.S. event of similar scale in the era of instrumental records was the in Alaska. That was also a strike-slip fault, involving the lateral motion of two crustal blocks, as opposed to the converging motion of a subduction zone fault. Fortunately that earthquake affected a sparsely populated region.”

In southern Turkey and Syria, “the risk remains elevated, unfortunately, because aftershocks are expected for some time — weeks to months to even years. Besides the 7.8 and the 7.5, there have been three aftershocks of magnitude 6.0 or larger already, and more can be expected. People in the region need to remain vigilant that more aftershocks may occur. It is also possible, though less probable, that additional, very large earthquakes could occur, even ones as large as, or larger than, the 7.5 and 7.8. Adjacent segments of the faults could still have built-up strain to be released.”

, 91̽��professor of civil and environmental engineering, studies older buildings with substandard details and connections to develop advanced computer methods that can identify weak points. She then creates rehabilitation methods to improve the structural performance of these buildings.

“It is devastating to watch the aftermath of this earthquake followed by aftershocks,” Lehman said. “Clearly we have to think about the magnitude of aftershocks and simple mechanisms to reinforce brittle structures.”

“Although every building is unique in its geometry, function and seismic demands, it is well understood that reinforced concrete buildings without seismic detailing are particularly vulnerable in earthquakes. In modern reinforced concrete design, we improve the seismic performance by using steel with very high strain capacities at fracture and closely spaced hoop-shaped reinforcement to encase the main reinforcing bars. Even if the two buildings have the same strength, only the building with the high-strain capacity steel and the encased rebar will be able to sustain the earthquake demands without collapsing. Otherwise the response is ‘brittle.'”

“Many countries are studying important technologies to prevent building collapse in moderate to large earthquakes. The knowledge and development of the technologies is the first step, but implementation and construction methods are also very important. We have seen over decades that improvement in codes leads to improvement in seismic response.”

“The most important thing right now is the humanitarian aspect of this tragedy: ensuring people who have been displaced have warm shelter and basic human necessities and evacuating structures that have a high probability of collapsing in a large aftershock. I am thankful for every person who is helping with that effort.”

, lecturer of international studies at the UW, is a retired foreign service officer. His expertise includes humanitarian emergencies, disasters from natural and human causes and public-private partnerships in disaster response.

“Turkish authorities will probably mount an effective response,” Ward said. “They have a lot of experience and international support. The situation in northwest Syria will be far more dire, where the seemingly endless civil war will make emergency response much, much harder.”