Maureen Ani wants to use the earthquake research she is doing in Kamloops to make a difference in her home country of Nigeria.

Regions of Nigeria are located along fault lines and have experienced varying degrees of quakes over the last 100 years, and in recent years, the scientific community has said bigger ones may be on their way and could occur in the next several years.

“I’m looking at a what-if scenario,” said the Master of Science in Environmental Science student of her research assessing potential damage costs to buildings in Kamloops. “Just because Kamloops isn’t in an earthquake area, we shouldn’t assume one won’t happen here. Kamloops is an important city within the Thompson Nicola Regional District and we have very important buildings — we have a university, government buildings and others.”

Using the natural disaster and risk management software Hazus-MH, she has entered Canada Census data dealing with Kamloops buildings and has found that 45 percent of them in the downtown area predate the seismic codes the province began introducing in the 1950s. If a quake was to occur and depending on the the location and magnitude, the financial costs could be negligible or serious.

“The HAZUS-MH earthquake damage estimation methodology has been applied successfully in some countries outside North America like Egypt and I hope to follow similar methodology to estimate potential earthquake damage for Nigeria,” she said.

Ani expects to defend her thesis in time to participate in Spring Convocation. Her supervisor is Jianzhong (James) Gu of Architectural and Engineering Technology.

The Centre for Geodesy and Geodynamics Nigeria is the main body for earthquake monitoring and documentation in Nigeria, she said, “however, this body is relatively new and developing compared to their counterparts around the world. There is an increasing need for further studies and improvement of seismic monitoring in Nigeria so as to predict future earthquakes and create awareness amongst the general public.”