Brazilian seismicity: Online news and social media that help us

Abstract

Historically, the earthquake studies was based on reports and records of newspapers, which referred to the estimation of the measure of the intensity of events. The advance of seismological instrumentation improved the calculation of magnitudes of earthquakes, which became a priority measure, to the detriment of intensity estimates. With the growth of access to information and communication technologies, the volume of relevant information for intensity estimation has become feasible and representative. We present the Brazilian Macroseismic Intensity Map between the years of 2006 to 2017, based on records of digital newspapers and blogs, and compare with the map of magnitudes recorded by the Seismological Observatory, Universidade de Brasília, in the same period. The Brazilian Macroseismic Intensity Map contributes to the improvement of the Seismic Hazard Map. The results show the importance of preserving the information of seismic events published in digital media.