Brendan W. Crowell, assistant professor, School of Earth Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded a 2025-2026 Fulbright U.S. Specialist grant to the Escuela Politécnica Nacional in Quito, Ecuador to improve early warning for tsunami hazards for residents in the Ecuador subduction zone.
During August 2025, Crowell will spend two weeks at the Instituto Geofisico on the "Enhanced Tsunami Early-Warning along the Ecuadorian Coast” Fulbright project.
“The main focus of this project is to enhance the Instituto Geofisico’s real-time Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) monitoring capabilities in the event of great earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis. The work I did over the past decade was creating the GNSS component of the USGS ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system, otherwise known as G-FAST. The G-FAST software package has also been deployed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) tsunami warning centers and at GNS Science in New Zealand,” Crowell explained.
With GNSS-based tsunami early warning, the near-field coastal area can be effectively warned in under 5 minutes, i.e., faster than the capabilities of NOAA’s Tsunami Warning (TWC) center using traditional seismic techniques. The IGEPN runs a real-time GNSS network on the coast, but the G-FAST program developed by Crowell through a NASA/USGS grant, and incorporating real-time geodetic data is not yet installed. This project will install the newest version of G-FAST into IGEPN´s server and provide the required capacity building for the IGEPN scientists so that the system is operating when a potential tsunami-producing earthquake of 7+ magnitude ruptures a segment of the subduction zone along the Ecuadorian-southern Colombian coastline.
“This project would be to deploy and modify the G-FAST code for optimal performance in Ecuador. We also intend to build additional monitoring tools to visualize the GNSS records. Also associated with this project is an education component where I will teach about the history of GNSS based monitoring and discuss all the benefits and limitations of the datasets,” Crowell noted.
Crowell has three overall goals for his Fulbright project. One, get G-FAST running in Instituto Geofisico’s network. Two, develop additional monitoring capabilities. Three, have a successful educational component where the Instituto Geofisico push forward GNSS monitoring independently of himself.
Fulbright Specialist Program
The Fulbright Specialist Program is administered by World Learning and is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
For more information about the Fulbright Specialist Program, contact Joanna Kukielka-Blaser.