Patent ID: 7392139

Claim:
A computer system for providing earthquake data for a defined area, the system comprising: a first data store for storing locations of a plurality of historical earthquake epicenters; a second data store for storing seismic parameters associated with a plurality of seismic zones, the seismic parameters being indicative at least of a magnitude and a likelihood of earthquakes in each of the seismic zones; a placement module configured to determine from the first data store a location of a selected historical epicenter within the area; a severity module configured to determine from the second data store a selected magnitude associated with a selected seismic zone comprising the selected historical epicenter; and a generator module configured to establish characteristics of a plurality of earthquake events in the area over a defined length of time, the characteristics of an earthquake event including at least the selected historical epicenter and the selected magnitude, and to generate a signal indicative of the characteristics of the earthquake events, the signal configured to enable at least one of showing on a display representations of the earthquake events, controlling an earthquake simulator, and storing stochastic earthquake event sets.