Shake3D Research

What this is

Shake3D Research is an experimental, volunteer-run earthquake early warning research project. It shows New Zealand's live ground motion, GeoNet's official earthquake reports, and its own automatic, provisional estimate of where an earthquake is and where shaking may reach. It was built out of love for Aotearoa.

Every provisional stage on the map is badged as unofficial. GeoNet's report supersedes it whenever one is published. No authority has certified or approved Shake3D, and it is not part of New Zealand's official warning systems such as Emergency Mobile Alert.

Data

• Waveforms: GeoNet SeedLink, real-time seismic data from the GeoNet network, a collaboration between the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake and Earth Sciences New Zealand, with LINZ. GeoNet content is copyright Earth Sciences New Zealand and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand.
• Earthquake reports and station metadata: GeoNet FDSN web services and the GeoNet API.
• Official shaking maps: GeoNet Shaking Layers.
• GNSS reference streams: LINZ PositioNZ RTCM, processed on our server to track ground displacement in large earthquakes.
• Basemap: OpenMapTiles vector tiles from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), self-hosted.
• Benchmark event maps: Esri Dark Gray Canvas base map (Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS user community), loaded from Esri's servers when you open an event.

We acknowledge the New Zealand GeoNet programme and its sponsors NHC, Earth Sciences NZ, LINZ, NEMA and MBIE for providing data used by this project. GeoNet data is used under CC BY 3.0 NZ and LINZ data under CC BY 4.0. Shake3D processes this data: its estimates are its own, not GeoNet's or LINZ's. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by GeoNet, Earth Sciences New Zealand, the Natural Hazards Commission, LINZ, NEMA or Civil Defence.

Software

Open-source components used, with their licences. Server-side libraries run on our machine and are not redistributed; browser libraries are served to you with their licence notices intact.

Methods

The research detector is our own implementation built on published early-warning methods: wavefield shaking estimation in the family of PLUM (Kodera et al., 2018), machine-learned phase picking and association, early P-wave size estimates, and standard ground-motion-to-intensity relations (Worden et al., 2012). Citing these ideas is how the field works; it does not mean the original authors reviewed or endorsed this system. The rupture-extent estimate is our own proxy and is not the ETH FinDer software (Böse et al.).

How these methods are combined, and every threshold, gate and calibration, are internal research choices and are not documented here.

Limits

• Land-only sensors: New Zealand has no offshore seismometers in this feed, so offshore earthquakes are located and sized late and less well.
• Provisional estimates can be wrong in location, size or both, and are revised or withdrawn as data arrives. GeoNet's report is authoritative.
• The near-source area receives no useful lead time from any system; only distant locations can.
• Alert sound is opt-in and depends on your browser and device staying awake with the page open.
• Notifications are opt-in, travel through your browser's push service, and can take seconds or longer to arrive, or not arrive at all.
• Delivery time to browsers is being measured but has not yet been established from a real large earthquake.
• Alerts can be false, late, missed or approximate. This is not an emergency service.

The full list, and the terms Shake3D is offered on, are on the terms & limits page.