Earthquakes are caused by the sudden release of energy generated during the fracture of stressed rock within the Earth's crust. The energy radiates outwards from the source as seismic waves and vibrates the ground. This phenomenon is similar to what happens in materials under load and is called Acoustic Emission (AE). On the other hand, the AE monitoring technique is analogous to the one employed in earthquake control, where seismic waves reach the monitoring stations placed on the Earth's surface. Although they take place on very different scales, these two phenomena - earthquakes in geophysics and damage in structural materials - have similarities. In both cases, there is a release of elastic energy from sources located inside a medium.