USGS Develops Twitter-Based Earthquake Detection

sprinkletown writes "A team of seismologists at the US Geological Survey has found that Twitter is the fastest way to get information out of an earthquake area, especially in those less densely populated. Seeing the Twitter community as an untapped resource, the USGS has developed a new way to track earthquakes by clustering quake-centric tweets."

Re:First post!

[IorDMUX]

You're a few hours late, but yes, we did have a magnitude 4.2 earthquake here in the Bay Area this morning. Of course, I'm from Cleveland, so I just assumed it was another big truck passing by the building, until I realized that I was nowhere near a major road.

I was impressed, though, at how quickly the USGS did send us all an e-mail detailing the quake, epicenter, magnitude, etc. They are certainly on the ball when it comes to the San Andreas fault, at least.

Now if we could only find a way to get advance warnings... unfortunately a time machine may be the most physically feasible method of doing that.

Re:Accelerometer Quake Detection

[coaxial]

A automated, networked, accelerometer-based quake detection process may be more reliable. Sure, a lot of mobile phones would be moving around, but if enough phones in the same areas showed synchronised movements, maybe this could work.

Those are called "seismographs."