Live Earthquake Monitor

Every earthquake detected on Earth, scored by how many people it actually affects. A magnitude 5.2 in the middle of the Pacific affects nobody. A magnitude 4.8 under a city can be serious. Most feeds only show you the magnitude.

How the Relevance Score works

Each event gets a score from 0 to 100. It combines three things, and the third is the one most feeds ignore.

Magnitude

The energy released. It matters, but on its own it says nothing about consequences — which is the whole problem with ranking quakes by magnitude.

Depth

Shallow earthquakes do far more damage than deep ones. A shock at 10 km is weighted roughly seven times more heavily than the same shock at 300 km.

Population exposure

How many people live within 200 km of the epicentre, weighted by distance so that closer settlements count for more. This is what turns a number into a consequence.

Worked example, from real data. On 13 August 2026 a magnitude 5.3 near Sarangani in the Philippines scored 63, with around 825,000 people within range. The same day, a magnitude 4.8 near the Bonin Islands scored 0 — a stronger quake, no score, because there is nobody nearby.

Tiers

Severescore 60 and above

Significantscore 30 to 59

Notablescore 10 to 29

Minorscore 0 to 9

Reading the map

Circle size shows magnitude — the physical size of the event.
Circle colour shows the Relevance Score — whether it matters.
Recent events are brighter and fade over 24 hours.
The panel alternates between the most relevant events of the last 24 hours and the most recent ones.

Data sources

USGS Earthquake Hazards Program — event feed, public domain. Updated continuously.
GeoNames — city and population data, CC BY 4.0. Used to compute exposure.
Natural Earth — coastlines, public domain.

The dashboard refreshes every two minutes and always shows when it was last updated. If the upstream feed stalls, the indicator turns amber rather than presenting stale numbers as current.

What this is not

This is an information and education project, not an official alert system, and it must not be used for emergency decisions. The score is a first-order proxy: it deliberately ignores local geology, building codes and soil amplification, which are the factors that actually determine damage. For official warnings, always refer to your national geological survey or civil protection authority.