This is an addition to my previous capstone project created to achieve the Data Analytics Professional Certificate offered by Google.
For this interactive world map, I’m using custom icons I created for both tsunamis and earthquakes, color coded according to the magnitude scale values. Icons are also included for occurrences where magnitude values are missing. And, icons are labeled with “T” for tsunamis and “Q” for earthquakes.
| Magnitude | Color | Icon |
|---|---|---|
| Not available | Cyan (293 occurrences) | T or Q |
| less than 5.5 | Gray (320 occurrences) | T4 or Q4 |
| 5.5 - 6.0 | Purple (909 occurrences) | T5 or Q5 |
| 6.1 - 6.9 | Orange (1,093 occurrences) | T6 or Q6 |
| 7.0 - 7.9 | Red (1,031 occurrences) | T7 or Q7 |
| 8.0 - 8.9 | Fucsia (122 occurrences) | T8 or Q8 |
| 9.0 - 9.9 | Maroon (5 occurrences) | T9 or Q9 |
The interactive world map below offers the option to filter earthquakes by magnitude, and is also a very useful source of information.
The GSED is a dataset of 6,273 entries and 47 total columns (variables) from which I am using the 3,773 occurrences since 1900 only.
In order to be classified as a significant earthquake, the event must meet at least one of the following criteria: moderate damage (approximately $1 million or more), 10 or more deaths, magnitude 7.5 or greater, Modified Mercalli Intensity X or greater, or the earthquake generated a tsunami.
This database provides information on the date and time of occurrence, latitude and longitude, focal depth, magnitude, maximum MMI intensity, and socio-economic data such as the total number of casualties, injuries, houses destroyed, and houses damaged, and $ dollage damage estimates. References, political geography, and additional comments are also provided for each earthquake. If the earthquake was associated with a tsunami or volcanic eruption, it is flagged and linked to the related tsunami event or significant volcanic eruption.
On the map’s top right position there is a magnitude check mark box that filters earthquakes by the selected magnitudes.
There are two ways to zoom in and out, either by using the “+” and “-” signs on the top left, or by scrolling up and down with the mouse wheel in the area map. To scroll up and down the page, just move the cursor outside the map. You can also click and drag to move the map in any direction.
The map also groups the earthquakes on each magnitude layer in clusters that depend on the zoom level, and adjust themselves automatically to show the number of earthquakes grouped in each cluster. In this way the earthquakes visualization doesn’t look too crowded.
By hoovering the mouse cursor on any icon, a label containing its associated data: magnitude, intensity, year, depth and deaths, is displayed. But, to get a better view of these values you can either click on that icon or press ‘Enter’ to see this values on a steady bigger box. To close this box, you can click on the “x” inside the box, or just click outside.
The following is an option map with no clusters, to view individual earthquakes without having to zoom in to the maximum level. This option may be more useful when viewing just one selected layer.