3 ms·
How the USGS uses Twitter data to track earthquakes
- IIAOPSW 11y agoRandall Munroe is a prophet! https://xkcd.com/723/ https://xkcd.com/723/
- thekevan 11y agoThe alt text for that comic is "The USGS operates a really neat email/SMS earthquake notification service (earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/) that allows fine-grained control of notifications." Sorry to be a fun spoiler!
- userbinator 11y agoIf they’re getting reports of an earthquake in a populated area but no Tweets from there, that’s a good indicator to them that it’s a false alarm. The other alternative is that the earthquake was so strong it destroyed all the infrastructure in the area, leaving people unable to even tweet. You have to consider all the failure modes carefully; an analogy that comes to mind is cargo smoke detectors in aircraft - if one shows a fire but the indication disappears shortly afterwards, there's a chance the fire destroyed the cabling too.
- zyxley 11y agoI think it's pretty likely that a seisomograph somewhere else is going to notice an earthquake of that magnitude.