The US Geological Survey (USGS) has revealed that they are looking into tweets uploaded shortly after earthquakes. Explaining that huge spikes were seen in Twitter traffic shortly after quakes, the survey said that this data could be used to assess how badly a certain area has been affected.
An explosive force on the social networking market, Twitter proves to be particular popular with users to document natural disasters such as quakes. The USGS explained that messages could be used to help determine how severe a particular event was. However, Dr Paul Earle from the survey stressed that information gained was only ever additionally to scientific data already existing. “It is a speed versus accuracy issue. Twitter messages start coming out in the seconds after an earthquake whereas, depending of the region, scientifically derived information can take 2-20 minutes,” he said.
Explaining at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fall Meeting how Twitter could be used as a tool, Michelle Guy, a USGS software engineer added “Twitter provides a stream that dumps out the tweets continuously. We put a filter on that stream, looking for key words like ‘earthquake’ or ‘quake’. We download it 24/7.”
Meanwhile Dr Earle said that the amount of ‘noise’ in the Twitter feed meant it could never be used for more than an additional information source. “Because there is a lot of noise in this data and we don’t believe this system could ever be used to initiate a critical response such as shutting down a nuclear power plant, but what it may do is give us an initial heads-up in a region which doesn’t have a dense seismic network that further scientific evaluation is needed,” he said.
