Towards Earthquake Early Warning Across Central America
Session: Earthquake Early Warning System in the Americas: The On-Going Effort and the State of the Art I
Type: Oral
Date: 4/19/2021
Presentation Time: 05:00 PM Pacific
Description:
Central America is exposed to frequent damaging earthquakes, from tsunamigenic thrust events and on-shore shallow crustal events often near densely urbanized areas. An effective Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system will not prevent the losses from such kinds of damaging earthquakes but can mitigate some of their consequences.
Since 2016, a collaboration between national seismic monitoring agencies and the Swiss Seismological Service aims to build national EEW systems that together can provide public alerts across the region. This initiative builds on the existing national seismic networks; the long-existing regional cooperation in earthquake monitoring and data sharing; and the close coordination with national and regional civil protection agencies. Currently, prototype EEW systems based on the Virtual Seismologist and Finder algorithms are implemented within SeisComP3 and are providing internal EEW alerts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.
In this contribution, we report on the progress towards EEW readiness throughout the project to date. Optimizing EEW systems have led to demonstrate the possible speed and quality of earthquake parameter estimations. 70 EEW-ready class A force balance accelerographs are being installed across the region to reduce EEW delays and improve reliability. These network upgrades also have a broader value for general seismological, tsunami and volcano monitoring. Through a collaboration with Japanese providers organization JTEC, their Emergency Warning Broadcast System via DigitalTV services will start providing prototype minimal latency EEW alerts. We further highlight key non-technical challenges including long-term funding of operational and governance structures and designing appropriate outreach messages for each nation. Additionally, work needs to begin across the region in order to prepare the population on how to react once an earthquake early warning is declared.
Presenting Author: Frédérick Massin
Student Presenter: No
Authors
Frédérick Massin Presenting Author Corresponding Author frederick.massin@sed.ethz.ch ETHZ-SED, Swiss Seismological Service |
Maren Böse mboese@sed.ethz.ch ETHZ-SED, Swiss Seismological Service |
Félix Suárez Bonilla felixdavidsuarezbonilla@gmail.com Independent Consultant |
Billy Burgoa Rosso billyburgoa@gmail.com Independent Consultant |
Esteban Chaves esteban.j.chaves@una.ac.cr OVSICORI-UNA, Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica, Universidad Nacional |
John Clinton jclinton@sed.ethz.ch ETHZ-SED, Swiss Seismological Service |
Griselda Marroquin gmarroquin@marn.gob.sv MARN, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales |
Marino Protti marino.protti.quesada@una.cr OVSICORI-UNA, Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica, Universidad Nacional |
Roman Racine racine@sed.ethz.ch ETHZ-SED, Swiss Seismological Service |
Wilfried Strauch wilfried.strauch@yahoo.com Instituto Nicaragüense de Estudios Territoriales, Managua, , Nicaragua |
Robin Yani Quiyuch royani@insivumeh.gob.gt Instituto Nacional de Sismología, Vulcanología, Meteorología e Hidrología, Guatemala City, , Guatemala |
Towards Earthquake Early Warning Across Central America
Category
Earthquake Early Warning System in the Americas: The On-going Effort and the State of the Art