The Copernicus Sentinel-1 twin radar satellites combined with cloud computing are monitoring Europe's earthquake zones by searching for ground shifts as small as a millimetre.

Radar was developed in the last century to pick up aircraft moving at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Today's satellite radar can reveal otherwise invisible shifts in the ground taking place as slowly as the growth of your fingernails.

The new, automatic radar service covers Europe's seismic regions, monitoring an area of three million square kilometres in 200 m blocks.

Once any motion of interest has been identified, more detailed checks can be made through ESA's Geohazards Exploitation Platform.