Earthquake Rapid Response Dashboard

Live dashboard: https://arashnassirpour.com/earthquake-dashboard/

A self-updating briefing page for the largest earthquakes of the last 90 days. Every figure is a value published by USGS (or another named source), passed through unchanged; the page does not estimate shaking, losses or aftershocks itself.

What is shown, and where it comes from

Section	Source
Magnitude and type, location, depth and depth type, status, station count, uncertainties	USGS event record (origin product)
Shaking intensity (MMI), peak ground acceleration (g), peak ground velocity (cm/s), spectral accelerations (0.3 / 1.0 / 3.0 s) and the map contours	USGS ShakeMap product (map-wide maxima, with version and status)
Fatality and economic alert levels, most-likely loss bins, population exposed per intensity, USGS impact statements	USGS PAGER product
Landslide and liquefaction alert levels, hazard area, people exposed	USGS ground-failure product
Fault mechanism, nodal planes, Mw, % double-couple	USGS moment-tensor product
Rupture dimensions and maximum slip	USGS finite-fault product; where none exists, the Wells and Coppersmith (1994) average length is shown and labelled as an estimate
Aftershock probabilities (M5/6/7+, day to year), expected M3+ count, observed counts	USGS operational aftershock forecast
Key points, tectonic setting, reported impacts	USGS event text products
Historical context	USGS catalogue (M5.5+, 250 km, 100 years)
Media	One link per outlet (BBC News, CNN, Sky News, ABC News): the best matching headline from Google News RSS limited to that outlet, or that outlet's own search page when nothing reliable is found
General	Wikipedia (event article only when year, month, day within one and magnitude within 0.5 match; otherwise a search), Wikipedia list of earthquakes of the year, USGS pages, EMSC, GDACS, GEM
ReliefWeb	UN OCHA ReliefWeb API: the disaster record for the event (same country, event date within 3 days) and its three latest reports; a ReliefWeb search link when there is no record yet
Rainfall	Open-Meteo (context only)
Alert strip	USGS, UN GDACS and NASA EONET (fetched by the browser on page load), plus ReliefWeb disasters with status alert, current or ongoing from the last 60 days (fetched at build time, so hourly)
Map tiles	Esri

Failed event-detail requests are reported as unavailable; nothing is invented. A source that fails is omitted. A total build failure exits unsuccessfully so the last good deployment stays live.

Quick start

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python run.py              # live mode
python run.py --watch      # rebuild every 10 minutes
python run.py --no-ai      # skip optional AI narrative
python run.py --no-open    # do not launch a browser
python run.py --days 7 --limit 3

Optional environment variables:

Variable	Effect
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Enables the optional AI narrative. Without it, that feature is skipped and the rest still builds
RELIEFWEB_APPNAME	Approved ReliefWeb API appname. Without it, ReliefWeb records and alerts are skipped and a ReliefWeb search link is shown. In production it comes from the repository secret of the same name

Architecture

File	Responsibility
settings.py	Constants, the MMI scale, PAGER thresholds, timeouts and limits
engine.py	Event enrichment and the few display calculations
usgs_products.py	Parsers for the USGS ShakeMap, PAGER, ground-failure, moment-tensor, finite-fault, origin, text and aftershock products
fetcher.py	External HTTP requests, media and general links
dashboard.py	HTML shell, CSS, serialisation, and data injection
dashboard_js.js	Client-side rendering and Leaflet map
run.py	CLI and build orchestration

The page includes a Standard / Sentinel theme switch. The optional Sentinel mission-control theme is loaded on demand from /sentinel/ in the main site repository (arashnass.github.io); locally, or anywhere that path does not exist, the switch simply has no effect.

TLS verification is enabled by default. Dynamic text is escaped and embedded JSON is protected against premature script termination. The generated report remains usable without further network access; map tiles and third-party browser assets degrade gracefully if unavailable.

Deployment

.github/workflows/refresh.yml builds and deploys the dashboard to GitHub Pages:

• Hourly on the hour, UTC.
• On every push to main.
• Manually through workflow_dispatch.

The media-link cache (media_cache.json) is kept between runs with actions/cache, so Google News is only asked about each event every few hours. keepalive.yml pushes an empty commit monthly so GitHub does not disable the schedule after 60 days of inactivity.

Production uses python run.py --no-open --no-ai, stages the generated briefing as dist/index.html, and deploys it with GitHub Pages. No Netlify configuration or build hook is used.

Limitations

This dashboard is an automated situational-awareness aid. Source feeds may be delayed, incomplete, revised, or temporarily unavailable. Do not use it as the sole basis for emergency response, life-safety decisions, or engineering assessment.

Licence

Copyright (C) 2026 Arash Nassirpour.

Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only (AGPL-3.0-only). See LICENSE.