Earthquake!

While this technology has been available for many years, some people don't know that you can view earthquake data at the United States Geological Survey web site. For example, here's the one I felt earlier this evening:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci37637991#executive

In addition to details for specific earthquakes, you can view all sorts of neat things such as:

• Latest earthquakes
• Significant earthquakes in the last 30 days
• Earthquake archive

If you felt an earthquake, you can complete a Did You Feel It form in which you are prompted to answer questions such as whether or not you felt the earthquake (of course), where you were located, if you were sleeping, shake intensity, your reaction and response to the shaking, motion of objects, damage to buildings, etc.

Just in the last 30 minutes, there have been more than a thousand responses in my neighborhood:

While this data sure makes for interesting graphics, I wonder how it can be used for research and analytics and particularly if past earthquake activity can be used to predict future earthquakes.