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Developing EEW Capabilities at the OVSICORI Seismic Processing Center

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: 05:30 PM Pacific

Description: 

Developing efforts for understanding and monitoring tectonic and volcanic activity and its imposed risk to the country have fruitfully converged towards the creation of the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica at Universidad Nacional (OVSICORI-UNA). With more than 90 state-of-the-art seismological stations distributed across the country, OVSICORI records more than 12000 earthquakes per year. Multiple and relatively large (M>6.0) subduction zone and continental earthquakes imposed a continuous risk to the local communities and the growing economy, increasing the necessity for the establishment of an Earthquake Warning System. Since 2019, as part of the EWARNICA project, a Swiss initiative, OVSICORI-UNA has been part of the evaluation and fine-tuning process of the earthquake early warning system (EEWS) being implemented in Central America. The current density of the network has proved to be good enough, but still needs coverage in other parts of the country, such as the Caribbean region. We will present several examples of how the current network has performed and how to densify it to optimize its performance for EEW. We will also show results of the first tests we will perform early in 2021, together with JTEC using their early warning broadcast system (EWBS) and the digital television transmission system of Costa Rica.

Presenting Author: Christian Garita

Student Presenter: No

Authors