Stanford AI Detection System Could Predict Earthquakes

A group of researchers unveiled a new method for using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance our ability to read seismic waves and, in doing so, improve our understanding of how they begin, and even how they come to a stop. Published in Nature Communications, the paper details a method that automates earthquake detection at the same time as tuning out much of the noise inherent to seismic data. Mostafa Mousavi and a team of researchers use artificial intelligence to focus on millions of tiny subtle shifts in the Earth's crust. They hope that these tiny movements might act as a Rosetta Stone of sorts for deciphering warning signs for big earthquakes. "By improving our ability to detect and locate these very small earthquakes, we can get a clearer view of how earthquakes interact or spread out along the fault, how they get started, even how they stop," Stanford geophysicist Gregory Beroza, one of the paper's authors, explained in a Stanford University press release.