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The Quick Earthquake Messages service of the Hong Kong Observatory becomes operational today (22 August, Wednesday).
The Observatory launched a trial version of the Quick Earthquake Messages service on Twitter in March 2011, providing the public with initial analyses on worldwide earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or above and locally felt earth tremors. (Figure 1) The service was subsequently extended to Sina Webio and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), and further through Short Message Service (SMS) and emails to special users such as electronic media, news agencies, government organisations, overseas earthquake monitoring centres etc. There are currently over 100,000 users receiving Quick Earthquake Messages directly through Twitter and Sina Weibo.
Since debut, the trial version of the Quick Earthquake Messages service has provided over 300 messages, covering events like the locally felt M4.8 Heyuan earthquake on 16 February and the M8.6 Northern Sumatra earthquake on 11 April this year. According to verification results for the past year or so, most Quick Earthquake Messages were issued within 10 minutes after the occurrences of earthquakes. The detection rate reached 98% and there was no false alarm. The performance was on par with the level of the best service in the world.
The operational use of the Quick Earthquake Message service marks a major milestone of the Observatory's earthquake information services. The Observatory will continue to strive to provide more rapid and accurate earthquake information to the public.
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