Seismic Intensity Estimates
Covering California, Nevada, Oregon, and northern Mexico.
The goal of the Intensity Lab is to change how we talk about earthquakes, moving past a single magnitude number to focus on site-specific seismic intensities, which can provide the essential information needed to make smart decisions after the shaking stops.
For significant USGS western U.S. earthquakes, we report observed seismic intensities at seismic stations and estimated seismic intensities using ground motion simulations for places with a population of at least 1,000 residents from GeoNames' cities1000 dataset.
What Intensity Lab does
Four products, one ground-motion pipeline.
Intensity Reports
Per-event shaking estimates for 2,002 cities across California, Nevada, Oregon and northern Mexico, from USGS ShakeMap with four NGA-West2 models alongside.
16 recent events →Intensity Animations
Rendered shaking videos driven by simulated seismograms from the BBP API — the clearest demonstration of what the service produces.
Watch →BBP API Dashboard
Build a scenario from a historic earthquake, place sites on a map, see the compute cost before you commit, then submit, monitor and download the results.
Get access →Verification & Validation
Every simulation is compared against real recordings at real stations. We publish the bias, the spectra and the caveats — not just a pass mark.
5 published reports →Site last deployed: August 11, 2026.