Hey… I was wondering what’s so specific about EMSC’s earthquake detection system ?
Hey Laurent, thanks for your question !
LastQuake is actually based on a crowdsourced detection system… That means that we detect earthquakes thanks to all the users that connect to our services as soon as they feel an earthquake.
When people experience a sudden tremor, they immediately consult the internet (social networks, blogs, news, etc) and search for information about the shaking they just felt.
This rapid convergence of people looking for information produces:
a massive increase of traffic to the EMSC website ;
concomitant launches of LastQuake mobile app;
a surge in the number of tweets containing the keyword “earthquake” in various languages.
These three methods are complementary and allow the EMSC to detect an earthquake within 15–120 s from the earthquake’s onset without analyzing seismic signals.
Want to know more about the EMSC detection system? Check out this video 
:
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So you’re basing detection only on these connections to LastQuake or to the website ? How do you know it’s not a fake ? 
Actually we combien these detections we others more classic type of seismological information : seismic data from official institutes.
Felt reports 
, comments 
, pictures 
:, and videos 
are the testimonies citizens share with the EMSC via:
- the classic and mobile websites
- LastQuake mobile app
Earthquake location, origin time, P- and S-wave arrival times, and magnitude are the seismic data contributed by more than 150 Seismological Institutes around the world (check the list of our contributors: https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/contributors.php)
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