Malawi: Seismic Hazard Training in Liwonde
22 September 2026— An SSA Community Grant has funded a week of hands-on seismic hazard training to support local hazard and infrastructure planning in Liwonde, a fast-growing township in southern Malawi’s active rift zone.
Led by Patrick Chindandali and Donna Shillington of Northern Arizona University, the project partnered with local geological and university departments to transition 13 students, early-career scientists and technicians out of standard classroom lectures and into the field. Operating professional field equipment for the first time, the participants recorded ambient seismic noise at 27 stations, ran 2D electrical resistivity profiles across a mapped fault zone and drilled and logged a 15.5-meter geotechnical borehole.
The long-term value of the training lies in the datasets left behind. All geological, geophysical and geotechnical data, including mapping around the Malape Pillars, are being archived in an open repository. Local planners, engineers and students can now use this open-access data to guide upcoming infrastructure planning and hazard mitigation in the Liwonde area.
Chile: DAS Workshop Concepción 2026
Another SSA Community Grant supported the DAS Workshop Concepción 2026, a three-day training held at the Universidad de Concepción (UdeC) to build national expertise in Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS): a fiber-optic technology that translates strain, temperature and vibration measurements into seismic signals for comparison with traditional seismometry.
Led by Catalina Morales-Yáñez, Javier Ojeda and Gonzalo Montalva of UdeC, the workshop drew 61 participants from 13 institutions across Chile and Germany— including students, academics and industry practitioners— for a mix of theoretical seminars and hands-on sessions in fiber-optic deployment, field data collection and analysis with open-source and machine-learning tools.
The grant brought in two international DAS experts, Ethan F. Williams (UC Santa Cruz) and Ettore Biondi (Stanford University), along with specialized interrogator instruments otherwise unavailable in Chile for field acquisition. Funding also covered travel for seven students from Santiago and Temuco, helping forge new research connections among participants. Every survey respondent said they would recommend the workshop to a colleague, and organizers reported it has positioned UdeC as a national and international leader in fiber-optic geophysical research.