Equator: Faster Decision Making for Geoscientists

Earthquakes form a permanent threat to humankind, causing death and injuries each year. For this reason, studying earthquakes has become an important area of research in geoscience. Responding to an earthquake event, for mitigation or for research purposes, demands quick decision processes which require timely and precise situational information. In this paper, we present Equator, a web-based content management system that automatically collects, integrates, and visualizes earthquake related information from various agencies. Equator was developed to meet specific requirements of the German Task Force Earthquake. It is in productive use by the Task Force since 2008 and proved to significantly reduce time required for acquiring situational awareness.