Near Real-Time Earthquake Line-Source Models Derived from Felt Reports

Abstract Rapid information on fault rupture geometry is critically important to assess damage and fatalities in large earthquakes strongly needed coordinate rapid rescue efforts if where necessary. Many countries around the world, however, cannot afford operate dense seismic networks required rapidly determine geometry. In this feasibility study, we investigate crowd-sourced felt intensity reports can be used close gap enable determination of orientation spatial extent ruptures. We apply Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) algorithm collected by European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC). develop an empirical relationship between azimuthal FinDer performance for automated event selection. This gives us a dataset 36 global (6.0?M?7.3) 2014 2020. find that resulting line-source models are generally consistent with spatially dependent patterns described reports, many achieve good agreement finite-source published literature: 50% events difference strike less than 30°, 75% 55°. could calculated automatically (M?6) within 10–30 min after their occurrence, provided sufficient number were available. However, our proposed method not only provides faster results, but also helps fill general which currently unavailable.