About
Why Intensity Lab
Why site-specific intensity content is worth building now, and what Intensity Lab offers on the web, by email and through a REST API.
Why now
Four conditions make site-specific intensity content worth building now.
A single magnitude carries limited value
During southern California earthquakes, a tenth of a magnitude unit could be the news story. That distinction means very little to anyone deciding what to do next. The useful question is the intensity, city by city: what did the shaking actually do here, and here, and here.
The standard products are twenty years familiar
ShakeMap and ShakeMovie have been the post-earthquake visuals for two decades. They remain authoritative and essential. But an audience that has seen the same map for twenty years is an audience with room for new content built on the same science.
Earthquake information travels many channels
It is no longer the six o'clock news. Earthquake information moves through social feeds, video platforms, messaging apps, and search. Content built for one broadcast format does not serve all of them.
Attention peaks immediately, then fades
An earthquake in a populated area generates intense, concentrated interest in earthquake science. That interest is greatest in the minutes and hours after the shaking stops, which makes rapid availability a design requirement rather than a nice property. Content that arrives a week later has missed its audience.
What Intensity Lab offers
Earthquake data products on the web, by email, and through a REST API. Public pages are open to everyone; a registered account adds email notifications and API access.
No account required
- ✓ Earthquake list — recent M3.5+ events in the western U.S. and northern Mexico (coverage area)
- ✓ Event detail pages — ShakeMap, GMPE comparisons, MMI scale
- ✓ Official sources Links to the authoritative networks: USGS, NCSS, SCSN, PNSN, CICESE (Mexico), Earthquakes Canada, and EarthScope. Full list on the Official Sources page.
- ✓ Earthquake animations Physics-based MP4 animations showing how shaking intensity affected specific cities, generated automatically for significant events (MMI 5+). Download or share directly from the animations collection or each event's detail page. For each of these events, the animated kitchen scenes are also posted to the Intensity Lab YouTube channel, one playlist per earthquake.
Registered account required
- ✓ Regional Event Summary email ShakeMap links, gazetteer MMI table, and distance-intensity plot sent after each M3.5+ event.
- ✓ Site-Specific MMI email Shaking report for your registered location with GMPE comparison at your site's Vs30.
- ✓ REST API access Programmatic access to event data, site intensities, and on-demand ground motion queries.
What powers the data
USGS ShakeMap Observations
USGS ShakeMap instrumental intensity data are used to produce an MMI estimate for each population center near the earthquake.
Observational Data through ObsPy
Recorded ground motions retrieved from FDSN data centers with ObsPy, instrument response removed and integrated to displacement, so animations can be driven by what a real seismometer recorded.
SCEC Broadband Platform
Physics-based synthetic seismograms, computed on the SCEC Broadband Platform through the BBP Services API, provide the ground displacement that drives each animation's rigid-body simulation.
Blender Physics Engine
Each animation is rendered in Blender, whose Bullet rigid-body engine moves ordinary household objects under the recorded or simulated ground displacement — no hand-animated shaking.
Intensity Lab is an independent project and is not an official source of earthquake information. It is not affiliated with USGS, Caltech, SCEC, GEM, NVIDIA, or any other organization whose data or software it uses. Read the full disclaimer →