Monday, January 22, 2007

A number of earthquakes occurred today in the Molucca Sea region close to small Islands of Gureda and Maju. String of earthquakes started with major 7.3 magnitude earthquake which occured on 18:27 WIB (GMT+7) time and shook surrounding islands:

The first earthquake caused damage to buildings in North Sulawesi cities of Manado, Bitung, Tongkoko and also Island of Ternate located on the East of the earthquake area. Due to the strength of the earthquake a tsunami alert was issued, yet no significant tsunami wave was later recorded. Several moderate and one strong 6.1 earthquake occured within next 7 hours (WIB/GMT+7 time):

Magnitude 5.2, 2007/01/22 02:59:50 Magnitude 5.5, 2007/01/22 02:50:51 Magnitude 6.1, 2007/01/22 00:32:54 Magnitude 5.1, 2007/01/21 22:12:36 Magnitude 5.6, 2007/01/21 21:39:19 Magnitude 5.2, 2007/01/21 21:11:40 Magnitude 4.9, 2007/01/21 21:10:35 Magnitude 5.5, 2007/01/21 20:55:17 Magnitude 4.7, 2007/01/21 19:50:13 Magnitude 5.8, 2007/01/21 19:32:35 Magnitude 4.9, 2007/01/21 19:17:19 Magnitude 5.6, 2007/01/21 18:54:11 Magnitude 7.3, 2007/01/21 18:27:42

Previously, I informed about an SMS based earthquake information service provided by one local company. I got seriously interested in the ability of such system and spent some time developing my own earthquake reporting engine. In current beta version it uses complex algorithm to quickly determine a strength of an earthquake and decide if it should be reported or not. Analysis is performed based on zones defined in GIS system with additional parameters involving direction of earthquake and distance to cities. The new version which I'm still developing additionally uses geological maps and some interesting algorithms. I'm also experimenting with pattern recognition in earthquake occurrence, but frankly I don't believe I'll be able to warn about erthquakes before it occur. Anyway, I'd like to inform that the service is currently using my earthquake analysis engine.

Export of earthquake monitoring zones from my engine to Google Earth.

The earthquake information service worked correctly and informed about today's earthquakes in seven SMS :-) Frankly speaking, I'm surprised with the number of earthquakes occuring within just 6 hours. I just hope users of my system were not anoyed with a string of SMS reporting each new earthquake.

If you'd like to test the service yourself simply send SMS with content "REG EARTHQUAKE" to 6768 (works with all Indonesian operators i.e. Telkomsel, XL, Flexi, Mobile 8 etc.). It costs Rp1000 per received SMS (US$0.1).

PS: I've prepared some interesting gifts for those of you who decide to test the service and send me some interesting comments about it.

2 comments:

Pojok Hablay said...

The gift offer is really tempting. But, I had not-to-nice experiences with those 4 number service. Easy to subscribe, but hell too hard to unsubscribe is one of the problem. It is often, not because I don't need the information, but because I don't want to get the shocked-phone-bill at the end of the month. So, well, I'm going to test the service only with prepaid card :)

Marek Bialoglowy said...

Very good point mellyana. FYI if you have problem with any of such services simply send SMS with content "UNREG" to the number from which you received a message. This will unregister your phone from all services provided by this number.

As for my earthquake warning system, simple SMS "UNREG EARTHQUAKE" to 6768 is enough.

PS: mellyana, please send me your e-mail address.

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