Evaluation of China’s automatic earthquake information release system

The paper presents an overall preliminary evaluation of China’s automatic earthquake information release system. By comparing the results based on automatic earthquake locating system with officially published earthquake catalog from Jan. 1, 2010 to Dec. 31, 2011, we calculated respectively the overall errors of 3 automatic locating systems and plotted interpolated error distribution in China and the whole world, and summarized the results. We also analyzed and discussed the issue of false alarm and missing report for the 3 systems. In general, the present earthquake information auto-release system in China can locate earthquakes with M≥3.0 in the Capital region, M≥4.0 in other areas of China (M≥5.0 in parts of western China where stations are sparse), and M≥7.0 outside China, and the “auto--results” can be used as reference for formal earthquake information release. The whole system is able to provide technical platform effectively for establishing a 2-step (i.e., auto-formal) earthquake information release system.