British researchers are now routinely mapping a great swathe of Earth's surface, looking for the subtle warping that ultimately leads to quakes.
The team is processing satellite images to show how rocks in a belt that stretches from Europe's Alps to China are slowly accumulating strain.
Movements on the scale of just millimetres per year are being sought.
The new maps are being made available to help researchers produce more robust assessments of seismic hazard.
The kind of change they are trying to chart is not noticeable in the everyday human sense, but over time will put faults under such pressure that they eventually rupture - often with catastrophic consequences.
This pair of spacecraft repeatedly and rapidly image the surface of the globe, throwing their data to the ground using a high-speed laser link. And by comparing whole stacks of their pictures in a technique known as interferometry, the COMET group can begin to see the very slow bending and buckling that occurs in the crust as a result of shifting tectonic plates.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38323832
