Happy birthday Virginia earthquake!

Ten years ago, a significant earthquake shook the state of Virginia. In Washington D.C., the White House, the Capitol, and various other buildings were evacuated. This event is a bit special for EMSC…

Can you guess why?

:question:
:question:
:question:
:question:
:question:
:question:

It was the first from North America to generate an automatically detected traffic surge on the EMSC-CSEM website.

♦ The traffic surges observed immediately after felt earthquakes are caused by eyewitnesses who felt the ground shaking and rushed onto the Internet for earthquake information.

♦ During the 2011 Virginia earthquake, the EMSC website visits were indeed triggered by the ground shaking: by considering the visitors as earthquake sensors, we were able to locate the epicenter with 30 km accuracy [*].

Careful though! The flash-sourcing approach does not replace any monitoring techniques or any macroseismic studies, but it does give insight on the public reaction to a significant earthquake.

[*] Bossu, R.; Lefebvre, S.; Cansi, Y.; Mazet-Roux, G. (2014). Characterization of the 2011 Mineral, Virginia, Earthquake Effects and Epicenter from Website Traffic Analysis. Seismological Research Letters, 85(1), 91–97. doi:10.1785/0220130106