Examining how increased functionality within the World – Wide Earthquake Locator will improve the understanding of seismic activity

Abstract

The World-Wide Earthquake Locator is a popular web service that maps the location of earthquakes since 1973. A review of the current web service has highlighted the opportunity to evolve the current web mapping interface.

Recent trends within mashups have influenced the decision to integrate near – real time mapping of volcanic activity. The release of the Google Earth plugin has offered the chance for a web browser to view depth data in a 3D environment. It was hoped that the introduction of this new visualisation technique would allow complex trends inherent within this data to be understood.

The research has revealed that the use of Google Maps for web mapping has created a more interactive learning environment for displaying relationships seen with seismic activity. User feedback has suggested that there is still a long way before the plugin could be used to effectively visual depth of earthquakes