In the weeks and months following a major earthquake, the surrounding area is often wracked by powerful aftershocks. Now scientists are using artificial intelligence technology to analyzed a database of earthquakes from around the world in an effort to predict where aftershocks might occur.

Earthquake scientist Phoebe DeVries of Harvard University and colleagues fed data on more than 130,000 mainshock -aftershock pairs into an AI neural network. The system consistently predicted aftershock locations much better than other methods, the researchers found.