Artificial intelligence improves China’s earthquake monitoring

Cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and super computers are playing increasingly important roles in China’s efforts to monitor and report earthquake information and assess damage more quickly and accurately.

An automatic AI-driven earthquake monitoring system that can generate seismic source parameters within two seconds is expected to provide new methods for real-time earthquake monitoring.

The system was jointly developed by the research team headed by Zhang Jie, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, and China Earthquake Administration (CEA), and put into trial operation at the CEA in December 2018.

Comparisons between 446 earthquake assessment results provided by the system and made using manual computing methods in 2019 have shown that the system provides extremely accurate results.

The system is made up of a set of AI-driven software systems, according to Zhang, who explained that unlike traditional earthquake monitoring systems, it has deep learning ability and is able to quickly handle data on ongoing earthquakes based on millions of seismic materials and seismological theories stored in its memory.

The use of AI technology in the system is similar to having all seismologists working together to handle seismic data, Zhang said.

While traditional earthquake monitoring systems are only able to handle earthquakes greater than magnitude 3, the AI-driven system can provide information on earthquakes of magnitude 1.0 and above, according to Zhang. He calls this an important breakthrough in earthquake monitoring, as small earthquakes are often the forerunners of greater earthquakes.


Source: en.people.cn