Trains Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco are not running at 3:20 on
August 24, when a magnitude 6 earthquake shook the region. But BART's computers
were working - and they knew what was going to happen 10 seconds before the
earth began to shake, thanks to an alert warning system prototype in California.
The earthquake occurred in the middle of the day, computers are loaded trains to
stop slowly - potentially prevent derailment and save the lives of
passengers.
With this scenario in mind, researchers are pushing for a much broader connect
the west coast of the United States band from California to Washington, with an
earthquake warning system in its own right. The project of the United States of
$ 120 million is funded is not yet guaranteed, but the last earthquake, centered
near Napa, California, which caused the damage value of several hundred million
dollars, political fortunes could tip your favor. Seismologists and managers of
emergency services will discuss the practical aspects of implementing these
systems at a conference on 3 September at the University of California,
Berkeley.
"I hope the Napa earthquake has created a sense of urgency," said Alex Padilla,
a senator from the state of California who represents a district near Los
Angeles. Padilla filed a bill that Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law last September,
which gives the state until 2016 to implement an early warning system before the
expiry of the legislation.
However, the law does not specify that the $ 80 million for the portion of the
system would come from California. That puts us at a crossroads seismologists:
if they are not able to push through an early warning system in time, could
fight for everything.
Several countries, including Mexico and Japan have extensive systems to protect
key infrastructure alert. And Istanbul, seismic sensors allow a major supplier
of natural gas from Turkey to close its pipelines if the plant is about to start
shaking. Similar warnings flow of nuclear power plants in Romania.
California has the backbone of a warning system - ShakeAlert, a project led by a
consortium of universities and the Geological Survey project (USGS). The system
uses real-time information from seismic waves reach the sensor network in
California to send warnings that the most damaging secondary waves, are
underway. Alerts are scientists and about 150 organizations, emergency managers
and other testers.
And the system works. In the recent earthquake in Napa (see "History repeats
itself") ShakeAlert provided about 10 seconds warning to San Francisco, which is
about 50 km from the epicenter. "If it is not a sufficient demonstration of the
system for financing the implementation of their own, size does an earthquake
have to be?" When asked Richard Allen, a seismologist at the University of
California, Berkeley.
ShakeAlert developed with 6.5 million philanthropic dollars Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, California, but that money will run next year. So
far, no one with money to become a mature operating system. In an ideal world,
the USGS years have implemented a federal electoral system warning, said Thomas
Heaton, seismologist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
And the system works. In the recent earthquake in Napa (see "History repeats
itself") ShakeAlert provided about 10 seconds warning to San Francisco, which is
about 50 km from the epicenter. "If it is not a sufficient demonstration of the
system for financing the implementation of their own, size does an earthquake
have to be?" When asked Richard Allen, a seismologist at the University of
California, Berkeley.
ShakeAlert developed with 6.5 million philanthropic dollars Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, California, but that money will run next year. So
far, no one with money to become a mature operating system. In an ideal world,
the USGS years have implemented a federal electoral system warning, said Thomas
Heaton, seismologist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
But the USGS budgets were declining for years, and the United States, probably
will end up with at least part of the bill. In the spirit of Heaton, this is not
an ideal solution, because states do not have the resources or experience: with
the support of the state is "like Florida runs an early warning system for
hurricanes," he said.
Padilla and other politicians tried to get money through various infrastructure
projects to improve the existing seismic network in California and add hundreds
of new stations. An earthquake early warning system will never be perfect: there
will always be a dead zone, an area very close to the shock of receiving a
warning. But this area can be reduced by adding stations and network upgrades,
Allen said.
For example, the decade old sensor closest to the epicenter of Napa seismic
station took 2.8 seconds to record tremor, process and transmit network that
monitors earthquakes in California. The sensor was, I could do all this in just
0.3 seconds - fast enough to alert the city of Napa that an earthquake was
imminent, which allows residents to dive for cover, Allen said.
To be most effective, the warning network is also required to connect to the
infrastructure, as it does for computers BART. "We're really talking about a
system of command and control of modern," says Heaton. "For our seismic networks
is something that trains and elevators and other automatically controlled, we
need a team of software developers working for several years," he says.
This connectivity becomes even more important were California to integrate your
system with the most seismic networks in northern Oregon and Washington. There,
the area of the Cascadia fault off has the potential to trigger a big quake as
magnitude 9 Fault is relatively far from the cities, if an early warning system
could give minutes custody in Portland, Seattle or Vancouver.
Expansion in Oregon and Washington, it would take 40 million years.
Seismologists in the region are designed to test alerts using testers - both as
ShakeAlert done - next spring, said John Vidale, a seismologist at the
University of Washington in Seattle.
“We don’t want to wait until we have a major damaging earthquake with hundreds
of fatalities,” says Allen. “We want to build it now.”