Awesome

Earthquake Frequency Analysis and Maps

Quick link: See the analysis.

This repository contains:

• Data and code used to analyze the decade-over-decade percentage change in earthquake frequency in each state in the United States.
• Code to create SVG maps of earthquakes in four states: Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The analysis and maps are referenced in the March 6, 2015 BuzzFeed News article, "Midwestern States Are Having Big Earthquakes Like Never Before."

Data

The data/earthquake_states.csv file contains information about all earthquakes of magnitude three or greater detected in the United States from 1975 through February 2015. The data were obtained via the U.S. Geological Survey and preprocessed in PostGIS to match each quake to the state containing its epicenter.

The stateshapes directory contains shapefiles for Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Analysis

Analysis for this project was conducted in an IPython notebook, the raw version of which can be found here. A rendered version of the notebook, which doesn't require installing or running any software, can be viewed here.

The maps were also generated in an IPython notebook, the raw version of which can be found here.

Output

The code in notebooks/make-state-maps.ipynb saves SVG maps to the output directory. There are two maps for each state: a "before" map, which contains all earthquakes of magnitude three or greater in the state between 1995-2004, and an "after" map, which contains all earthquakes of magnitude three or greater in the state between 2005-2014.