We live in earthquake territory, and not a day goes by when I don't think about the actions I'll take when that Big One strikes. Most of us do this, too, because our governments' emergency planning efforts include robust programs to keep us informed about the best ways to protect ourselves during an earthquake.

But we can do more and improve our economy at the same time - by moving our communities to becoming more resilient to earthquakes and other natural and man-made events.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March last year is a tragic case in point. Scientists and policymakers had bet that the fault zone immediately south of the one that slipped would be their next deadly event. The fact that the earthquake was generated by a more northern slip meant that there had been less focus on building resilience- post-quake food availability and tsunami protective measures, escape routes and systems to protect important power systems - in the adjacent cities and coastal communities. These are the very ones that took the brunt of the earthquake and tsunami.

This decision cost more than 15,000 lives, delivered an economic blow with a price tag of tens of billions of dollars and resulted in physical devastation from which it will take decades to recover.

Scientific research, released this week in the journal Science, points out that a newly discovered type of fault motion, dubbed "slow slip," was a precursor to the Japan's Tohoku earthquake. This new information, in turn, led U.S. scientists to be awarded funds to install tectonic plate movement gauges off our coast on Canada's cabled ocean observatory, the first of its kind in the world.

Led by the University of Victoria, the Ocean Networks Canada Observatory connects the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate to the Internet for 24/7 monitoring.

Much of what we know about our West Coast earthquakes comes from landbased sensors. Yet the plate movements that give rise to the great subduction earthquakes actually occur under the ocean, not on land. For the first time, this new scientific equipment will provide real-time tectonic plate movement detection offshore, close to the fault's shallowest location where seafloor movements trigger tsunamis.

The observatory will provide open and transparent information that not only helps our earthquake scientists better understand seismicity, but also reinforces resilience by creating a culture where these hazards are widely understood and taken seriously by those at risk and those in positions of authority.

Canada's global leadership in building ocean observatories in one of our most earthquake-prone locales positions us a step ahead of other countries in building resilience that not only protects us, but keeps us economically protected, in the range of billions of dollars, from these natural disasters. This same approach - installing ocean observatory infrastructure to understand where, how, and to what extent we should invest in resilience - also applies to our Arctic Ocean.

It is there where coastal communities, the marine environment, resource industries and the military - all strongly linked to our sovereignty - are being affected by another type of event: the greatest warming of any place on the globe today.

Let's maintain Canadian leadership in ocean observing and invest in observing the changes in the Arctic so that we can build and support a resilient and economically robust North.

Kate Moran is director of NEPTUNE Canada, part of the University of Victoria's Ocean Networks Canada Observatory.