Recent Earthquakes Near Canadian Tire (CanTire)

Retail Locations

5 June 2014

Each May Canada coordinates Emergency Preparedness Week, an initiative to help Canadians plan for emergencies. The theme for this year’s week, “Know your Risks”, got us thinking about business preparedness as it relates to earthquakes.

(Emergency Preparedness Week 2014 promotional graphic)

Why earthquakes? Well, earthquakes are among the most deadly natural hazards, and SigActs catalogs earthquake activity in near real time from reporting by the USGS, Natural Resources Canada and the European‑Mediterranean Seismological Centre.

(visualization of global plate tectonic movement)

In the spirit of Canadian Emergency Preparedness Week, we set out to understand where earthquakes have occurred in a close proximity to a staple of Canadian living: Canadian Tire. With 494 retail locations, Canadian Tire (CanTire) is one of Canada’s most powerful retailers, and the place to shop for tools, sporting goods, auto parts and home decor.

(CanTire store in Oakville, Ontario – circa 2004)

An earthquake near a Canadian Tire store could significantly impact customers, employees, business operations and local infrastructure.

Using SigActs Pro, we plotted the location of all Canadian Tire stores (with red dots), and then overlaid a heat map (with purple dots) of all worldwide earthquake activity occurring between January 1, 2014 and June 1, 2014.

(Canadian Tire stores as red dots, and earthquake locations as purple dots)

This visualization clearly shows that Canadian Tire stores in Southern British Columbia and Southern Quebec are in the vicinity of recent earthquakes. We can take this analysis one step further by doing a “nearest neighbor” search to produce a list of the five earthquakes in this dataset that have occurred closest to CanTire retail stores.

(Canadian Tire stores as red dots, and earthquake locations as purple dots)

StoreNumber

CanTire StoreLocation

EarthquakeDate

Distance fromCanTire Store

EarthquakeMagnitude

306 LA MALBAIE, QC 2014/01/09 2662 meters(1.6 miles)

1.5

155 LAVAL, STE-DOROTHEE, QC 2014/04/04 3231 meters(2 miles)

1.7

234 DOLLARD DES ORMEAUX, QC 2014/04/04 3720 meters(2.3 miles)

1.7

008 BLENHEIM, ON 2014/03/24 4148 meters(2.6 miles)

1.9

363 FORT ST. JOHN, BC 2014/05/18 4159 meters(2.6 miles)

2.2

Five Earthquakes Nearest toCanadian Tire StoresSince 1 January 2014

The SigActs feed of real time event data is a great way to visually and quantitatively identify areas of risk. By understanding your risk, you can take steps to minimize or avoid injuries, damage, and long-term financial consequences.

Visit SigActs Real Time Earthquake Reporting Map

SigActs provides data to let you monitor natural disasters in real time, and to see how these critical incidents may impact your facilities, personnel and supply chains.

This information originally appeared on the SigActs Blog under the categories of: Corporate Safety, Corporate Security, Earthquakes, Emergency Preparedness, Public Safety, Retail Security.

SigActs built the Internet's premier location-based news API, and has extensive experience making geospatial data accessible and actionable.