2021 Earthquake Competition Concluded
Our 30-week earthquake prediction & forecasting competition has ended
After 30 weeks, our earthquake forecasting competition has come to an end. With astounding results, we have successfully proven that a new technological approach of big data and AI is the way forward to solving the mystery around earthquake prediction.
The average daily accuracy rate achieved has been 88% and an average weekly accuracy rate of 75%. This has increased drastically from 2010 when the average accuracy rate within the region (Sichuan & Yunnan) was less than 30%. This has indicated that using big data and artificial intelligence, it is possible to predict and forecast earthquakes.
What were the competitors asked to do?
From 2015 to 2020 the AETA team has deployed over 300+ 3-part sensory systems across the earthquake-affected regions of Sichuan & Yunnan, China.
Over the course of 5 years, the AETA team has been collecting high-frequency seismic data and has accumulated over 47TB of data. With this data, the AETA team built a base algorithm that is capable of detecting anomalies within the live data that indicated an earthquake’s occurrence, epicenter, and magnitude.
To increase the algorithm’s accuracy, AETA arranged a competition and invited research institutes, universities, and individuals to participate in building upon the algorithm.
All data collected was shared with the participating teams weeks before the start of the competition to train their algorithms. Once the 30-week competition began, live data (from the 300 sensors) was then shared among all the teams every week.
They were then asked to submit their predictions for the following week, including the earthquake’s magnitude and epicenter.
Competition's success
The competition shortlists 30 teams from the competition to then submit their findings.
Each of the 30 teams will then be judged by a panel of 12 experts in the field of earthquake research. The winning team will receive a cash prize of $15,500 USD and the subsequent teams will receive $7,800 USD for 2nd place, and 5 running up teams will receive $3000 USD each.
Each team shortlisted will also have the opportunity to continue this research and integrate themselves into AETA’s full-time algorithmic teams.
The future of AETA
The AETA team will continue to deploy more sensors across the regions of Sichuan & Yunnan, ultimately this will increase the amount of data collected, and in turn, increase the overall accuracy rate within the regions.
AETA’s technology will begin pilot testing in other countries, beginning with South East Asia, and will expand across other international countries.
The technological approach has proven that earthquakes can be predicted. By using a mesh-grid network of sensors combined with big data & AI it is only a matter of time before we can forecast earthquakes with an over 90% accuracy rate several days before they occur.
