By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA—In the first ten minutes after the earthquake hit in central Italy this week, The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre could pinpoint where its greatest impact occurred by tracking the number of hits to its Web site. It did so using Atlanta-based Digital Element’s IP Intelligence technology to accurately detect the areas affected by an earthquake based on the geographic location of each site visitor.
A number of seismological centers have websites that collect real-time earthquake information, but EMSC has developed an original system to organize the data into “felt maps” that determine where earthquakes are felt, regardless of their magnitude. While traditional seismological procedures can take up to several hours to register the impact of an earthquake, felt maps can provide in-situation information on the impact of an occurrence in less than 10 minutes.
“This approach focuses on the reaction of the population rather than the physical seismological data from the earthquake itself,” said Remy Bossu, Secretary General, EMSC.
“Measuring the extent of an earthquake as quickly as possible is critical to determining the impact to surrounding population centers and their infrastructures. Therefore, we needed to have the most reliable source for IP location. We evaluated all vendors in the marketplace and found Digital Element’s IP Intelligence solution to be the most accurate.”
Once an earthquake is felt, witnesses often rush to the EMSC website to find out the cause of the shaking. This is often the first expression of a felt earthquake — a surge in the site’s hit rate. In order to find out where the earthquake was felt, EMSC uses IP Intelligence to identify site visitors’ geographic locations down to a city level.
The locations exhibiting increases in visitors are then automatically mapped. The system is also capable of mapping damaged areas, as they are characterized by a significant lack of visitors.
“We have been able to create a relevant, yet non-traditional application, for our IP Intelligence solution,” said Frank Bobo, vice president of business development for Digital Element.
Bobo tells TechJournal South that the company saw its initial opportunity in providing IP-based geographical and demographic information to the large online ad networks such as Doubleclick, Value Click and others, who remain its core customers.
“Ninety percent of the world’s online ad networks are clients of ours,” he says.
Web publishers also use the company’s intelligence to target advertising and customize content based on geographical information the same way they do ads. Web analytics companies were also early adopters.
Bobo explains that the Digital Element technology gathers its data at the end points where IP addresses feed in the local ISP and never goes to a home or business machine. “We stop at the IP end point in your neighborhood,” he says.
That alone provides location within miles, as well as other demographic information about the user such as language, currency, time zone, and zip codes.
Until it was acquired by Landmark Communications in 2007, 40-employee Digital Element was a venture-backed company that raised tens of millions. Landmark owns a number of media properties and sold the Weather Channel to NBC Universal. It also jointly owned the Autotrader franchise, which is now solely owned by Cox.
Online: wwww.digital-element.net
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