SEISMO-SURFER: A Prototype for Collecting, Querying, and Mining Seismic Data

Earthquake phenomena constitute a rich source of information over the years. Typically, the frequency of earthquakes worldwide is one every second. Collecting and querying seismic data is a procedure useful for local authorities in order to keep citizens informed as well as for specialized scientists, such as seismologists, physicists etc., in order to study the phenomenon in its detail. A seismic data management system should meet certain requirements implied by the nature of seismic data. This kind of data is not solely characterized by alphanumeric attributes but also from a spatial and a temporal dimension (the epicenter and the time of earthquake realization, for example). Moreover, visualizing areas of interest, monitoring seismicity, finding hidden regularities or irregularities, and assisting to the understanding of regional historic seismic profiles are essential capabilities of such a system. Thus, a spatiotemporal database system, a set of data analysis and knowledge discovery techniques and a userfriendly visualization interface, compose the Seismo-Surfer, a prototype that, further to the above, aims to integrate seismic data repositories available over the WWW.