Shake3D Research

Shake3D is unofficial. Shake3D detects earthquakes after they begin. It does not predict earthquakes before they start. New Zealand has no official earthquake early warning system. Official warnings come from NEMA and Civil Defence.

When you feel shaking: Drop, Cover and Hold. Don't wait for an alert. Near the coast, if the shaking is long or strong: get gone.

What Shake3D is

An experimental, volunteer-run earthquake early warning research project by the Ready Kiwi team. It is free.
It is not an official warning or emergency service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by GeoNet, Earth Sciences New Zealand, the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, LINZ, NEMA or Civil Defence, and no authority has certified or approved it.
It estimates earthquakes and shaking automatically from public GeoNet seismic data, typically within about a minute of a quake (sometimes sooner, sometimes later), before any person has checked them.

Official sources come first

Warnings and emergency instructions: NEMA and your local Civil Defence (civildefence.govt.nz, getready.govt.nz). Emergency Mobile Alert is the official phone alert system. Shake3D is not part of it.
Earthquake information: GeoNet.
If anything on Shake3D differs from an official source, follow the official source.

What Shake3D can get wrong

False alerts: it can warn of an earthquake that did not happen, or of shaking that does not come.
Missed alerts: some earthquakes will not be detected in time, or at all, especially offshore.
Late alerts: close to the epicentre, shaking arrives before any warning can. An alert may come before, during or after the shaking.
Wrong estimates: location, magnitude and expected shaking are automatic and provisional, and change as data arrives. GeoNet's report is authoritative.
Delivery: sound, the page and notifications depend on your device, browser, battery settings and network. A notification can take seconds or longer to arrive, or not arrive at all.
Availability: the service can stop at any time without notice, including during an earthquake.

How to use it safely

Use Shake3D as an extra, never as your only source, and never instead of official warnings.
Drop, Cover and Hold when you feel shaking, whether or not you get an alert.
Near the coast: long or strong, get gone. Don't wait for an alert or for an official tsunami warning.
Don't connect Shake3D to anything that acts automatically, such as machinery, gas, lifts, doors, trains or sirens. Don't use it for decisions where a false, late or missed alert could cause harm or loss.
Don't pass Shake3D alerts on as official warnings, or as coming from GeoNet, NEMA or Civil Defence.

Liability

Shake3D is free. We run it with reasonable care, but it is an automatic system: it can be wrong, late or unavailable, and we cannot guarantee otherwise.

Where we have taken reasonable care, the Ready Kiwi team and the volunteers who run Shake3D are not responsible for loss or damage from false, late or missed alerts, or from the service being unavailable, to the extent the law allows.

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under New Zealand law that cannot be excluded, including under the Fair Trading Act 1986 and the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 where they apply.

Data and privacy

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. Shake3D processes it, so its estimates are ours, not GeoNet's. Full sources are on the credits page.

The page works without collecting personal information. If you set your location for a local shaking estimate, it stays in your browser. To measure how fast warnings reach people, the page sends anonymous timing receipts: when each update arrived, tagged with a random number that changes every visit, with no name, address, location or device details. The site is carried by Cloudflare, which handles connection data to deliver it. On the benchmark page, opening an event's map loads base-map tiles from Esri (ArcGIS Online), which receives your IP address and the map area; nothing is loaded from Esri until you open one.

If you turn on alerts, the notice shown before you turn them on lists exactly what is stored, why, where and for how long.

Corrections, changes and contact

How we look after it: changes to the detector are tested against recorded earthquakes before they go live, and the live system's health is shown on the status page.
When new data shows a warning was wrong, Shake3D updates or cancels it on the page.
These terms may change. The date below shows the current version.
New Zealand law applies to these terms.
Questions, corrections or privacy requests: [email protected].