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Earthquake hazard icon Earthquakes

ADAM monitors earthquakes globally using GDACS and USGS feeds. Dashboards are auto-generated within minutes of an event and refined with USGS ShakeMap-derived shaking intensity once available.

Data sources

  • USGS — United States Geological Survey: epicentre, magnitude, depth and, when produced, the ShakeMap shaking-intensity raster
  • GDACS — Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System: event registry and alert level
  • Reference layers — a global population grid, GAUL administrative boundaries and WFP facilities, used to turn the footprint into impact figures

What ADAM produces

  • Initial dashboard — epicentre, magnitude, depth and the population within 15, 30 and 50 km, published minutes after detection
  • ShakeMap dashboard — the same layout with the USGS intensity raster and the maximum Modified Mercalli Intensity, once the ShakeMap is available
  • Population table — exposed population per administrative unit and intensity class, as XLSX and CSV

How each product is laid out and how to read it is explained in Dashboards & Products. In the API the same event is one feature of adam.adam_eq_events, with the products as URL fields.

How to read the outputs

Magnitude is not intensity. Magnitude (mag, moment magnitude) measures the energy released at the source and is a single number per earthquake. Intensity (mmi, Modified Mercalli Intensity from I to X+) measures how strongly the ground shook at a given place and varies across the map with distance, depth and local geology. A magnitude 6 at 10 km depth under a city is more dangerous than a magnitude 7 at 600 km depth under the ocean; intensity captures that, magnitude does not.

Exposure is not damage. The population figures count people living inside each distance ring or intensity band. They say nothing about building quality or actual casualties, and they should be read as an upper bound on who may be affected.

Two versions, minutes apart. The initial dashboard is built from the epicentre and magnitude alone, so the population rings are simple circles. When USGS publishes the ShakeMap, ADAM regenerates the dashboard and the table on the intensity footprint. The Live Map and the API always expose the latest version; treat the ShakeMap dashboard as the one to circulate.

Thresholds. The Live Map shows earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more that have a dashboard. Email alerts use higher thresholds that depend on your area of interest: 6.5 globally, 6.0 for a Regional Bureau, 5.5 for a single country.

Typical alert workflow

  1. USGS publishes the event; GDACS registers it
  2. ADAM generates the initial dashboard within minutes and publishes the event on the Live Map
  3. Email alerts go to subscribers whose area and threshold match
  4. The dashboard and the population table are regenerated when the ShakeMap becomes available

Next steps