Reference · built on requestCommons signalEarth, seismic & volcanic

GEOFON

Global earthquake locations, station metadata, and waveform access from the GFZ GEOFON programme's FDSN web services.

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About

GEOFON is the seismological programme of the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. It locates earthquakes worldwide from around 1000 broadband stations and serves them through fdsnws-event on geofon.gfz.de, back to 1 August 2007. Events seen at 30 or more stations are published automatically and marked A, then C once checked, while events with fewer observations are published only after a geophysicist's review and marked M. Companion services expose station inventory, waveform data, and availability for networks archived at GFZ.

Through Fibric, an operator reads events near your sites, waits for the magnitude to settle, and proposes a route change, a sensor check, or an incident record for your approval.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from GEOFON 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

  • Located earthquakes from fdsnws-event at /fdsnws/event/1/query, with time, box, radius, depth, and magnitude filters
  • Solution status per event: A automatic, C confirmed after checking, M manually reviewed
  • Focal mechanisms and moment tensors through includefocalmechanism, includeallfocalmechanisms, and includestationmts
  • Output as QuakeML xml, qml-rt, sc3ml, text, or csv via the format parameter, by HTTP GET or POST
  • Station and channel inventory for networks archived at GFZ from fdsnws-station
  • Real-time and archived waveforms from fdsnws-dataselect, with time windows from fdsnws-availability
  • A recent-events RSS feed and the Earthquake Explorer map at geofon.gfz.de/eqexplorer

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

  • Flag a metric shift that coincides with a quake

    When a site metric moves within an hour of a nearby GEOFON event, the operator annotates the anomaly with the event id and status letter rather than raising a fresh alarm.

    With Anomaly Notice

  • Reroute vehicles away from a shaken area

    After an event above your magnitude threshold, the operator proposes rerouting active trips that pass within the radius and shows the event for approval.

    With Route Deviation

  • Explain a burst of sensor faults

    When vibration or tilt sensors at several sites fault together, the operator checks fdsnws-event for a matching quake before proposing any maintenance ticket.

    With Sensor Health

Requirements

  • Site coordinates and a search radius in degrees for the event query
  • A rule for provisional solutions, since automatic A events can change depth and magnitude in the first minutes
  • The FDSN network code for any restricted dataset you need, plus the producer's permission and a GEOFON token
  • Attribution to the GEOFON programme of the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in anything you publish
Authentication
No key for open data. Restricted networks need written permission from the data producer and a token from the GEOFON EAS service tied to your email address.

Limits

  • fdsnws-event does not implement the catalog or updatedafter parameters; contributor maps to agencyID
  • fdsnws-dataselect serves only networks archived at GFZ, not networks held at other EIDA data centres
  • GEOFON warns that automatically determined parameters may be wrong until a geophysicist revises them
  • Some networks are embargoed until a stated date and carry CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-ND terms rather than CC-BY

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.

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Questions and answers

What do the A, C, and M status letters mean on a GEOFON event?
A is an automatic solution published without review, seen at 30 or more stations. C means the automatic solution was checked and found satisfactory without manual revision. M is a manually reviewed event, used for events with fewer than 25 observations, which are published only after review.
How far back does the GEOFON event catalogue go?
fdsnws-event holds events GEOFON has located since 1 August 2007. GEOFON says magnitudes may be updated often in the first minutes after an earthquake as more data arrive.
What licence applies to GEOFON earthquake products?
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. GEOFON asks you to state that event locations were obtained from the GEOFON programme of the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences using data from the GEVN networks. Waveform networks carry their own CC licences and DOIs.
Ask about GEOFON

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 GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, GEOFON programme (geofon.gfz.de). 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