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Building a Resilient Earthquake Early Warning System in Canada: Sensor Spacing and Station Design

Session: Earthquake Science, Hazards and Policy in Cascadia [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/20/2021

Presentation Time: 11:30 AM Pacific

Description: 

An Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS) needs to meet onerous uptime requirements to be capable of warning for incoming strong ground motions when required, even under adverse conditions. Failures of components of the system are inevitable, with variable consequences for the overall system. Careful consideration of redundancy is required to ensure required levels of system uptime.

Modelling of sensor-spacing on a grid indicates ~20 km spacing provides a reasonable trade-off between station density and warning times, based on depths of Canadian earthquakes. Reducing spacing to ~15 km within and near urban areas provides a degree of redundancy to protect against random station failures without compromising warning times. Larger station spacing of ~40 km in more remote regions simplifies logistics without significant sacrifice of warning time. Simple failure modelling shows the loss of one or two randomly-distributed stations has a negligible effect on system performance.

Station reliability is estimated using data from the last 3 years of Canadian National Seismograph Network (CNSN) operation. With almost 200 recently refurbished or newly installed stations in a variety of settings across Canada, CNSN failure rates provide a reasonable proxy for uptime performance of future EEWS stations. As with the CNSN, the station design for the EEWS seeks to optimize operational aspects by standardizing installation components, maximizing redundancy, availability and reliability of communications and power, and ensuring physical security.

Presenting Author: Stephen Crane

Student Presenter: No

Authors