The U.S. Geological Survey is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support a graduate student who’s investigating social Internet technologies as a way to quickly gather information about recent earthquakes.

In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and quantity data to provide geo-located earthquake detection within 60 seconds of an event’s origin time. This approach also provides a central directory of short first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location.

Social Internet technologies are providing the general public with anecdotal earthquake hazard information before scientific information has been published from authoritative sources.  People local to an event are able to publish information via these technologies within seconds of their occurrence. In contrast, depending on the location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between 2 to 20 minutes. By adopting and embracing these new technologies, the USGS potentially can augment its earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information.

For more information on this project, please e-mail USGSted@usgs.gov. Read more information about the USGS Earthquake Program. You can follow the project updates on Twitter @USGSted.