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National Earthquake Information Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The National Earthquake Information Center (abbreviated NEIC) is part of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) located on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.
The stated mission of the NEIC is
- "to rapidly determine location and size of all destructive earthquakes worldwide and to immediately disseminate this information to concerned national and international agencies, scientists, and the general public."
Using a combination of automated tools and human review, NEIC issues magnitude and location information as soon as possible after a quake. As earthquake waves take time to travel around the globe, the estimated magnitude may change as more information is received. The NEIC uses seismograms recorded in the United States as well as around the globe. While they gather as much data as they can, some nations do not release earthquake data to the United States for political reasons.
NEIC personnel are often sought out by the news media after a large earthquake as experts. Thus the NEIC has a higher public profile than other parts of the USGS.