Reactive Swarm Detector

What it does

Scans the last 7 days of global M2.5+ earthquakes. Applies single-link spatial clustering with magnitude-variance gating (max - median < 1.5 magnitude units) to discriminate swarms from mainshock-dominated aftershock sequences. Writes every detected swarm to the ledger as swarm_detector_reactive.

Physics basis

Earthquake swarms are characterized by low magnitude variance and spatial clustering without a dominant mainshock. The detection is a pure classification -- we classify the present earthquake catalog, we do not forecast future events -- so precision is bounded by the correctness of the clustering algorithm, not by forecast skill.

When it fires

Runs at :10 and :40 past every hour.

What the customer receives

• Real-time alert on every newly-detected swarm
• Swarm location, magnitude distribution, event count
• Per-swarm time-series of event rate + magnitude
• Cross-reference to known volcano catalogs (GVP)

Operational numbers (live)

Engagement paths

Per-query, subscription, territorial-exclusive, and royalty-on-find structures are all available. Specific commercial terms are scoped after a technical-fit conversation.

Honest caveats

• Classification-by-construction means precision is a design parameter, not an empirical measurement; false positives are driven by clustering-algorithm edge cases, not by forecast error.
• Does not predict whether a swarm will culminate in a larger event -- that's a separate forecasting question.
• Catalog-dependent: if USGS misses or miscodes events, the classifier sees the corrupted catalog.