Presentation and dissemination of scientific information: the case of the June 12, 2017 Mw 6.3 Lesvos earthquake (Northeastern Aegean Sea)

On June 12, 2017 a strong earthquake struck Lesvos Island (Northeastern Aegean, Greece). It was assessed as Mw 6.3 and was predominantly felt on Lesvos Island and throughout the North Aegean Islands and western Turkey. The southeastern part of Lesvos Island suffered the most by the earthquake in its natural environment, building stock and infrastructure. Very heavy structural damage was limited in the traditional settlement of Vrissa. Taking into account that Vrissa is located inland, further from the epicenter than other settlements with less damage, Vrissa looks like an earthquake impact paradox. For interpreting this paradox, a rapid field macroseismic reconnaissance was conducted performing not only classical methods of earthquake damage assessment (e.g. building-by-building inspection), but also modern and innovative techniques, which comprise the use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) online applications as the basis of a rapid postearthquake damage assessment before any intervention was made in the settlement. Thus, all earthquake effects on the natural environment and the building stock of Vrissa were collected and saved with maximum accuracy for further processing and analysis. A set of the scientific data acquired in the field and the preliminary scientific results obtained by the aforementioned research has been further presented by using the ESRI Story Map web templates. Story Maps give the researchers the possibility to authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content to help visualize information, and new functionality is being added and improved regularly. In the case of the 2017 Lesvos earthquake, a story map has been created and is accessible here. All users interested not only in the characteristics and the impact of the 2017 Lesvos earthquake have the opportunity to navigate freely between them at their pace. Moreover, they have the possibility to expand or hide explanatory legends, quickly switch between slides, open or close pop-up photos and maps, view properties and attributes of selected geometries such as date, latitude, longitude, magnitude and depth of earthquake epicenters presented as point geometries, view the dominant types of buildings in the affected area and the earthquake-induced damage in the traditional settlement of Vrissa.