A comparison can be drawn to the scales used for measuring earthquakes. Although the Richter scale is quite common in many parts of the world, in Japan the Shindo scale is primarily used. This measures the local ground shaking intensity, as opposed to the Richter scale which measures the amount of energy released in the quake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...

I thought the world had broadly moved onto the moment magnitude scale?