Seismic Event Labelling in the Google Earth by Interactive User Interface Operation and by Program

Abstract

Google Earth has received popular acknowledgment due to its exuberant, dynamic and very low access overhead authorized geographic information. It also has been incorporated into many fields of earth science especially geographic information systems (GIS). Intense earthquakes may incur heavy damage of human life. More frequently occurring weak earthquakes may be the precursors of some strong earthquakes. Hence, the drawing and timely updating of historically and newly occurring earthquake epicentre distribution graph is one of the indispensable routine works for seismologists. Labelling earthquake or explosion’s epicentre in Google Earth renders people more information about the quake and its surrounding area. And labelling observatory station locations of selected events is certainly helpful for the event’s wave display, comparison, analysis and further researches. This paper achieves the programming drawing of epicentre distribution graph and introduces the selective labelling of observatory station locations which retrieve from event wave file (.evt format) on Google Earth. Finally, the potential application prospects of this paradigm in seismological researches are also discussed.

This work is financially supported by China Seismological Bureau on contract No. 200808003.