Criminal Liability for Inadequate Scientific Prediction of Natural Disaster?

predictive seismology is a wild ass guess based upon a heavy reliance on "event statistics". This is wrong on so many fronts.

Italy has always been one of my least favorite countries because of **** like this .

(In the Amanda Knox case, she was legally innocent while her appeals were going on. A judge put her in prison because she was considered a flight risk.)

L'Aquila convictions focus attention on advisors' role
(24 October 2012 | By Stuart Nathan | TheEngineer.co.uk)

The conviction of six Italian seismologists for manslaughter over ‘false assurances’ about the risk of the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 has been roundly condemned by scientists across Europe. It has called into question the whole practice of expert advice to government, and focused attention on earthquake prediction and risk.

It seems that what happened in Italy was, at best, an error in communication. After ‘swarms’ of small tremors were detected in the Abruzzo region, a group of seismology expertts met in L’Aquila and advised the Civil Protection Agency that such swarms were not a sure predictor of an imminent large earthquake — which is quite true, because earthquakes are impossible to predict with any accuracy. They didn’t say that there was no risk of a major earthquake, for the same reason.

However, following the meeting, the head of the Civil Protection Agency, Bernardo de Bernadinis, told the press that the scientists had told him there was no danger — as a result of which, many L’Aquila residents stayed in their homes. When the quake hit, the following day, it destroyed 20,000 buildings and killed 300 people.

The court ruled that the scientists should have publicly corrected de Bernardinis’s statement, and therefore shared his culpability; all seven are now beginning six-year sentences, which is two years longer even than the prosecution requested. Perhaps they should have. But it’d be a brave Italian scientist who gave anything other than the absolute worst-case scenario if a similar situation were to arise again — which, in a country on the Ring of Fire where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are a constant risk, is very likely. The level of scientific knowledge and understanding of the statistics of risk seem to be appallingly low in the Italian judiciary: unfortunately, they aren’t much better anywhere else.

There’s a warning lesson here. The deaths and injuries were caused by collapsing buildings, not suited to the unstable geology of L’Aquila. A mixture of inadquate building codes and poor engineering was to blame there; engineers could be forgiven for looking at the unfortunate seismologists and thinking ‘there but for the grace of God’. We know how to build safely in earthquake regions — The Engineer has reported on research on protecting historic buildings and making new buildings quake-resistant, for example. hopefully, the teams involved in rebuilding L’Aquila are taking note of the latest techniques in earhtquake resistance engineering and acting accordingly. Any engineers advising local government had better make sure they are giving their advice loudly and clearly, and going public if they their recommendations aren’t enacted.

It would be easy for us in the UK to look over to Italy, shake our heads and say that it couldn’t happen here. For one thing, we don’t have high-magnitude earthquakes; for another, nobody thought of suing Michael Fish 25 years ago, when he rubbished predictions of the ‘hurricane’ that caused such damage across Southern Britain. But think of what happens when scientists employed by the government make public their disagreements with policy; and how often politicians disregard expert advice in search of votes and approval.

It’s important that members of the science and technology community make their opposition to such travesties as the L’Aquila judgement known. But it’s equally important for anybody involved in advising governments, and any scientist or technologist who deals with risks to the public, to make sure their opinions are communicated clearly, well understood and acted upon. And to take action if they aren’t.

But it’s equally important for anybody involved in advising governments, and any scientist or technologist who deals with risks to the public, to make sure their opinions are communicated clearly, well understood and acted upon. And to take action if they aren’t.

Revisiting the tragic Italian earthquake manslaughter verdict
(By Dan Murphy, The Christian Science Monitor, October 25, 2012)

A few days ago I wrote about the L'Aquila earthquake verdict in Italy, that saw seven Italians, some of them the country's most eminent seismologists, sentenced to prison for failing to "adequately warn" about an earthquake that claimed 300 lives in the central Italian city in April 2009.

I wrote on Monday "today, a court in the central Italian city of L'Aquila... sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead."

Longtime Monitor science reporter Pete Spotts pointed out that my story may have overstated the case, and directed me to a good article in Science, "Aftershocks in the courtroom," that was written ahead of the verdict but is one of the better pieces on English about the background to the court case that has drawn condemnation from around the globe and seen a number of top Italian government scientists resigns their posts in protest.

The nuance I missed? The prosecution did not seek manslaughter convictions for the seven men strictly on the basis that they "failed to predict" the earthquake. Instead, the complaint was that they downplayed the probability of a major earthquake around the time that L'Aquila was hit, and were therefore liable for the deaths because they had unduly reassured the public. If the scientists had been more alarmist, the reasoning seems to go, residents of the L'Aquila area would have been more inclined to sleep in cars or outdoors, and therefore fewer would have died in building collapses.

This distinction feels a little like hair-splitting to me, since the demand is still that they should have known that an earthquake was more likely than their own predictions indicated. But since predicting an earthquake at a particular time and place is impossible, so is assigning precise probabilities. If you ever hear someone say that there's a 72 percent chance of an earthquake in your town next Tuesday, know that you are talking to a charlatan.

Nevertheless, some of the people involved in communicating to the public ahead of the L'Aquila quake, in which a "swarm" of tremors had heightened local concerns that a big one might be on the way, certainly got their science wrong.

In late March of 2009, Bernardo De Bernardinis, who was then the deputy head of Italy's Civil Protection Department, appeared on a L'Aquila area local television station to address fears that a major earthquake was on the way. According to Science, Mr. De Bernardinis said recent tremors did not increase the risk, and that “the scientific community continues to confirm to me that in fact it is a favorable situation.”

Science writes: "The ongoing tremors helped discharge energy from the fault, De Bernardinis explained. Trial witnesses later said this was particularly reassuring because it suggested the danger decreased with each tremor."

Well, no. Though there is some science that indicates that the energy released in earthquakes, particularly major ones, lessens the chance of another major earthquake until tension builds up along a fault again, that isn't always the case. And while a swarm of tremors sometimes passes without a major quake, they sometimes presage one. To say that a series of tremors has lessened the chance of a major earthquake is as incorrect as saying they mean one is definitely coming.

At around that time, L'Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente told another local TV station that "there should be absolutely no risk" of major damage to local buildings. That was an unknowable at the time (and clearly wrong given later events) and Mr. Cialente's reassurance was inappropriate, to say the least.

But Cialente was not one of the men sentenced to prison this week. De Bernardinis was among the seven, the only of the convicted who isn't a geologist. All seven men appeared at a press conference in L'Aquila on May 30, 2009. Science summarizes the tone of their overall remarks "as reported in newspaper articles and television reports, was: Stay calm; it’s not possible to predict earthquakes, but we don’t expect a major quake is on the way."

Well, they were wrong. But in any given time window, it's more likely that a major earthquake will not occur than that one will. The L'Aquila quake struck on April 6, seven days later. Had the men been more alarmist would people have stayed outside of buildings for the next seven days, saving lives? Perhaps, though that seems unlikely.

Lead prosecutor Fabio Picuti complained in his indictment against the men that they were culpable because they had provided "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information."

Well, of course. Neither can an earthquake be predicted accurately, nor can precise probabilities be assigned. University of Rome Volcanologist Franco Barberi had said during a meeting ahead of the May 30 press conference that a "seismic sequence doesn’t forecast anything," a point that Mr. Picuti strongly took issue with, though in a strict sense, Mr. Barberi was right.

Science writes of Picuti's summation:
"Picuti pointed out during his summing up that L’Aquila’s 1461 and 1703 quakes were also preceded by foreshocks—and argued that the defendants knew this and should have taken it into consideration. “Why,” he asked, “didn’t another commission member say: ‘No, Professor Barberi, we can’t make such a definite statement; let’s instead talk in terms of probability—that very rarely a seismic swarm can evolve into a strong tremor’? If this had been written in the minutes, I certainly wouldn’t be spending my time here discussing this.'”

So in essence, he pursued the prosecution because a scientific commission had failed to say that "very rarely a seismic swarm can evolve into a strong tremor." The assertion that this would have saved lives seems risible.

New Scientist has been kinder to the verdict than many other outlets, however, and their point about public communication and science is worth considering:
"Employed by Italy's Major Hazards Committee to assess earthquake risks and communicate them to the government and the public, the seismologists got the science right, but left the job of public communication to a civil protection official with no specialist knowledge of seismology. His statement to the press was, to put it mildly, a grossly inaccurate reflection of the situation: "The scientific community tells us there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favourable." At this point, the seismologists should have stepped in. But they did not, and the message stuck.
... Many commentators argue that the L'Aquila verdict will have a chilling effect on the provision of scientific advice in Italy and beyond. That is clearly a concern worth taking seriously. However, it should also encourage scientists who take on those roles to think long and hard about the responsibilities that come with them. It is tempting for scientists to defer communication with the public to others who are supposedly "experts" in doing so. But this approach often leads to confusion, as evidenced by a litany of failures in the past: BSE [mad cow disease], vaccines, genetically modified crops and many more."

However, it should also encourage scientists who take on those roles to think long and hard about the responsibilities that come with them

Has anyone asked what would have happened if they had stated that a major quake was either likely, or at least not ruled out? Some people stay in their homes when a major hurricane is a certainty. How many would leave because of a strong possibility of a quake?

If the scientists had said run to the hills at once and an earthquake did not then occur I can seem them being charge with causing panic and for any deaths cause by the mass movement away from the town.

Once more who in their right mind is going to make any public statement in the future on this subject?

Personally, I feel government has the responsibility to assess risk, to properly inform the public, to provide for safe evacuation, and to aid victims of disaster.