Reference · built on requestCommons signalEarth, seismic & volcanic

Geoscience Australia Earthquakes

Recent and historical earthquakes, felt reports, focal mechanisms, and ShakeMap records from Geoscience Australia's WFS.

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About

Geoscience Australia runs the National Earthquake Alerts Centre, which it describes as the only earthquake monitoring and alerting service in Australia operating 24 hours a day. Its GeoServer at earthquakes.ga.gov.au exposes the earthquakes workspace as a WFS 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 service with fees and access constraints both listed as NONE. Layers include earthquakes_seven_days, earthquakes_ten_years, earthquakes_felt_reports, earthquakes_focal_mechanism, earthquakes_stations, and shakemap, each retrievable as GML, JSON, CSV, KML, or Shapefile.

Through Fibric, an operator queries the seven-day layer around your sites, reads felt_reports_count and shakemap status, and proposes an inspection or an alarm grouping for you to approve, with the event_id kept on the record.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from Geoscience Australia Earthquakes and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • Events from the last week through earthquakes_seven_days, with origin_time, latitude, longitude, depth, preferred_magnitude, and preferred_magnitude_type
  • A rolling decade of events through earthquakes_ten_years, and the earthquakes layer for the wider set
  • Public felt reports through earthquakes_felt_reports: felt_report_id, date_time, submitted_date, event_id, and geometry
  • ShakeMap availability per event through the shakemap layer: shakemap_enabled, shakemap_version, shakemap_extent, and shakemap_source
  • Focal mechanisms and station records through earthquakes_focal_mechanism and earthquakes_stations
  • Quality fields on each event: evaluation_mode, evaluation_status, station_count, phase_count, azimuthal_gap, and published_version
  • Context fields: located_in_australia, nearby_place1 to nearby_place4, felt_reports_count, and hours_since_quake

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Sort real shaking from a sensor fault

    Vibration or tilt sensors at several sites alarm at once. The operator checks earthquakes_seven_days for a matching origin_time nearby and proposes closing the alerts as one event or opening a fault ticket.

    With Sensor Health

  • Bring an inspection forward

    For events above a magnitude you set within a radius of a property, the operator proposes moving the next structural or plant inspection earlier and attaches the event_id and felt_reports_count.

    With Inspection Scheduling

  • Reset lifts after a felt event

    Felt reports and a shakemap around a building suggest lifts may have tripped into seismic mode. The operator proposes a status check and a vendor reset request for your approval.

    With Elevator Fault

  • Group an alarm flood

    When a plant's alarm rate spikes in the minutes after an event, the operator proposes tagging the burst with the earthquake and suppressing duplicates until you clear it.

    With Alarm Flood

Requirements

  • A WFS client or plain HTTP GET against earthquakes.ga.gov.au/geoserver/earthquakes/wfs
  • A bounding box or radius per site to filter GetFeature results
  • Attribution as '© Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)' with the year under CC BY 4.0
Authentication
None. The WFS answers GetCapabilities, DescribeFeatureType, and GetFeature requests without a key; the capabilities document lists fees and access constraints as NONE.

Limits

  • The capabilities document lists Transaction and LockFeature, but this listing reads only; Fibric sends no writes
  • Events carry evaluation_mode and published_version; an automatic solution can be superseded, so re-read by event_id
  • No update interval is published for the layers; poll on your own schedule
  • Magnitude columns such as mla, mb, and mw are filled only when computed, so read preferred_magnitude first

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request Geoscience Australia Earthquakes ↗

Questions and answers

What formats can I request?
GML 2.1.2, 3.1.1, and 3.2, JSON, CSV, KML, and Shapefile (SHAPE-ZIP). Set outputFormat on a GetFeature request against the earthquakes workspace. WFS 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 are supported.
How do I know if a solution is final?
Each event carries evaluation_mode, evaluation_status, event_modification_time, and published_version. A later published_version for the same event_id replaces the earlier one. Keep event_id as your key, not the row.
Is there a licence or fee?
The capabilities document states fees NONE and access constraints NONE. Geoscience Australia licenses website material under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, with attribution to the Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) and the year.
Ask about Geoscience Australia Earthquakes

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by Geoscience Australia (earthquakes.ga.gov.au). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy