More Change : Earthquake notifications

Continuing on from my last post on the upcoming changes to www.geonet.org.nz, the move from human to automated earthquake location is bringing you faster information but it also means a few things will have to change.

At the moment when an earthquake is located the information is posted onto the website and then sent out to emails / twitter/ facebook etc. and this can take up to 20min.

Now SeisComP3 has an initial quake location out within a few minutes of an event, this then gets revised as more data comes in. So this is where the change comes in!

We will now be able to give you event information a lot quicker than before, but due to the 'history' of the quake and the slight change in size / location when more data comes in, the format will change.

Our GeoNet Rapid feed on Twitter has already been using this format for a while, see the pic on the right.

So you see, you will have to click the link to get all of the quake details and the final location. But you will be able to see, within a few minutes, that there was a event of xx intensity in xx area. (reminder on intensity at the bottom of the page)

From early September you will see these changes on Twitter, Facebook and emails as well as on the website.
Frequent users of GeoNet Rapid and those of you with our android /iPhone apps will be more familiar with this.

We do understand this will take a wee bit of getting used to, but you will be getting information faster than ever before!

GeoNet.org.nz - Change is coming!

Back in 2002 this is what the GeoNet website looked like!
(Not very exciting!)

And I'm sure everyone knows what it looks like now!

But with the arrival of our new, faster earthquake location system SeisComP3 We have been busy behind the scenes upgrading GeoNet the website, to make our information easier for you to see.

Some of you would have seen this with our GeoNet rapid beta website

From the September 1st this will no longer be a beta-testing page, it will be the official site of GeoNet earthquake information. With all of NZs earthquakes posted and within a few minutes of their occurrence!  You can easily view by region and 'all' quakes or just 'felt' quakes.

Now something different we have done is made GeoNet into 3 different websites, they are all joined by the black bar you see at the top of the GeoNet rapid page. There is a volcano, earthquake and information site 

So although 3 different sites, they are all linked and will be easily accessible for you all. 

Second we have the Volcano beta site:

Here are a couple of screen-shots  (its online so some of you may have have a look). You can see we have all of the volcanoes in NZ and you can easily see their current status (eg erupting or not!)  

You can then click on a particular volcano and get more information on their status and see pictures and videos from the volcano cameras.

Now the third website is where you will get all of your information, and data. 

So what we do at GeoNet:
* Earthquakes - how we locate them what causes them etc.
* Volcanoes - how we monitor them, historic eruptions etc. 
and not forgetting landslides and tusnami.

You will also have all the information on our networks and equipment we use and access to all of our data we collect that is available for you to use (for free!!)

And we will have pages with information all grouped together on the latest events such as the Canterbury earthquakes and the latest eruption(s) in NZ. We will also have all the latest news, volcano alert bulletins and GeoNet news publications. Another neat thing is the look - as you can see on the right, the news articles will look far more interesting than they do at the moment. 

Now don't worry if you don't' see your favorite things in these screenshots, more content is being added (these sites are still being modified) and our www address will stay the same. Another great thing about the new website is the ease of use for us, and we can add new information - change volcano alerts etc and get it out to you right away.

So its the same GeoNet just faster and better looking!!

White Island Eruption Video

This movie is made from photos taken from our cameras on White Island on Sunday Morning 5th Aug. Luckily the moon was out!