Twitter Beats U.S. Geological Survey To Philippines Quake News

[wickedplayer494]

[url]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-31/twitter-beats-u-s-geological-survey-to-philippines-quake-news.html[/url]

[quote=Bloomberg]The U.S. Geological Survey was tipped off to the 7.6-magnitude earthquake off the coast of the Philippines by messages posted to blogging site Twitter Inc.

The Reston, Virginia-based agency detected tweets about the earthquake one minute and seven seconds after the seismic event, which occurred at about 8:47 p.m. local time, Paul Earle, a USGS seismologist, said in a telephone interview.

Social media sites such as San Francisco-based Twitter are playing a stepped up role in alerting people and gauging reactions to natural disasters. USGS scientists monitor short blogs, known as tweets, for mentions of the word “earthquake” and its equivalents in other languages.

“In some cases, it gives us a heads up that it happened before it can be detected by a seismic wave,” Earle said.

The system for monitoring Twitter, called the Tweet Earthquake Dispatch, is most effective in remote regions, where the agency does not have as many instruments for measuring seismic activity as it does in an earthquake-prone area such as California, Earle said.

A tsunami alert was canceled after being issued on the heels of the temblor. The Philippines has been battered by natural disasters in recent months, killing dozens of people. President Benigno Aquino has drawn criticism for his handling of the crises. The nation was hit by an earthquake that killed at least 48 people and triggered landslides that left dozens more missing in February.

The USGS occasionally receives false alarms from the prototype system, such as when Twitter users post messages about the song “Earthquake” by British musician Labrinth.

“It’s not foolproof,” Earle said.[/quote]

[PassTheBong]

This makes complete sense. Of course the people there are going to be the first responders. All it takes is a phone

[wickedplayer494]

This XKCD comic is actually quite fitting:

[img]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/seismic_waves.png[/img]

The same thing happened with the Virginia quake of last year, where people that hadn't felt it yet were notified about it right before it hit.