JQuake is a real-time seismic intensity visualizer for Japan that maps live ground shaking across roughly 1,744 sensor stations and surfaces Earthquake Early Warning (EEW). The core application is written in Java by its original author. My involvement is on the support side: web hosting, helping the community, and sharing feedback. Separately, I put together my own small independent client as a proof of concept, most recently a Tauri v2 experiment, just to explore what a modern cross-platform version might look like.
How it works
The Java app polls Japan's public seismic monitoring network on a roughly one-second cadence, decodes per-station ground-motion data, and paints each station on a dark map with a continuous color scale from calm blue through red. When an Earthquake Early Warning is issued it estimates the epicenter, draws expanding P-wave and S-wave circles, and shows expected intensity. My part is keeping the web side online, helping users, and passing fixes and ideas back upstream. My proof-of-concept client reimplements a slice of the live map on a Rust and TypeScript stack to try the idea out. It is an experiment, not a replacement.
// A look
Live nationwide view: every station colored by real-time intensity, with a scrolling recent-earthquake list.Earthquake Early Warning in action: expected intensity shading with expanding P-wave and S-wave rings.Shaking detection: a corroborated cluster of active stations stands out against the calm blue background.Tsunami warnings rendered as color-coded coastline segments by warning level.Fully localized Japanese interface, including station names and the earthquake list.
