Strategy for Taking Full Advantage of Earthquake Early Warning System for Earthquake Disaster Reduction

Abstract eng:
On October 1st 2007, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) started disclosing Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) information to the general public. Although this information can be very useful to reduce damage in coming earthquakes, if used inappropriately, it could, in the worst case scenario, be more damaging than no information at all. In order to avoid this situation, it is important that the general public understands the meaning and limitations of the information that is being provided therefore avoiding false expectations. The EEW system uses the difference of wave velocity between Primary wave (P-wave) and Secondary wave (S-wave), to disclose the seismic intensity and arrival time with considerable accuracy before the strong ground motion is felt. As many seismometers have been installed in Japan, when an earthquake occurs, the nearest location seismometer can detect P-wave and this information will be immediately be sent to the JMA. Using the information, JMA can calculate the location and magnitude of the earthquake from which the observed P-wave is generated within 4 seconds since the P-wave detection time. With occurrence time, location and magnitude of the earthquake, seismic intensity and arrival time of the expected ground motion can be estimated and informed to the persons who are located at some distance from the earthquake source. The EEW system has six steps: a) P-wave detection by the nearest location seismometer, b) data transmission to JMA, c) calculation of location, magnitude and occurrence time of the event by JMA, d) delivery of the information to dissemination and disaster-related organizations by JMA, e) delivery of the information by these organizations to users, f) use of the information for disaster reduction by the users. In this paper, issues with the current EEW system will be classified following to these steps and discussed. Then, their solutions will be introduced for proper use of EEW system.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket