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Earthquake Genesis and Earthquake Early Warning Systems: Challenges and a Way Forward

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Roshan Kumar
Roshan Kumar
Roshan Kumar
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Himanshu Mittal at Ministry of Earth Sciences
Himanshu Mittal
Sandeep Arora at Banaras Hindu University
Sandeep Arora
Babita Sharma at Ministry of Earth Sciences
Babita Sharma
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Abstract and Figures

Several natural hazards, including earthquakes, may trigger disasters and the presence of disaster drivers further lead to the massive loss of life and property, every year around the world. The earthquakes are unavoidable, as exact earthquake prediction in terms of date, and time is difficult. However, with the advancement in technology, earthquake early warning (EEW) has emerged as a life-saving guard in many earthquake-prone countries. Unlike other warning systems (where hours of warning are possible), only a few seconds of warning is possible in the EEW system, but this warning may be very helpful in saving human lives by taking the proper action. The concept of EEW relies on using the initial few seconds of information from nearby instruments, performing basic calculations, and issuing the warning to the farther areas. A dense network or enough network coverage is the backbone of an EEW system. Because of insufficient station coverage, the estimated earthquake location is error-prone, which in turn may cause problems for EEW in terms of estimating strong shaking for the affected areas. Seismic instrumentation for EEW has improved significantly in the last few years considering the station coverage, data quality, and related applications. Many countries including the USA, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have developed EEW systems and are issuing a warning to the public and authorities. Several other countries, namely China, Turkey, Italy, and India are in process of developing and testing the EEW system. This article discusses the challenges and future EEW systems developed around the world along with different parameters used for EEW. Article Highlights This article aims to provide a comprehensive review related to the development The explicit emphasis is on the scientific development of EEW parameters The challenges and future scopes for the effective implementation of EEWS are discussed in terms of the correct location, the magnitude estimation, the region-specific use of ground motion prediction equations, communication technologies, and general public awareness
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Surveys in Geophysics (2022) 43:1143–1168
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-022-09710-7
1 3
Keywords Earthquake early warning· Regional warning· On-site warning· Earthquakes·
Earthquake early warning parameters
REVIEW PAPER
Earthquake Genesis andEarthquake Early Warning Systems:
Challenges andaWay Forward
RoshanKumar1· HimanshuMittal2 · Sandeep3· BabitaSharma2
Received: 15 November 2021 / Accepted: 12 April 2022 / Published online: 16 May 2022
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022
Abstract
Several natural hazards, including earthquakes, may trigger disasters and the presence of
disaster drivers further lead to the massive loss of life and property, every year around
the world. The earthquakes are unavoidable, as exact earthquake prediction in terms of
date, and time is difficult. However, with the advancement in technology, earthquake early
warning (EEW) has emerged as a life-saving guard in many earthquake-prone countries.
Unlike other warning systems (where hours of warning are possible), only a few seconds
of warning is possible in the EEW system, but this warning may be very helpful in saving
human lives by taking the proper action. The concept of EEW relies on using the initial
few seconds of information from nearby instruments, performing basic calculations, and
issuing the warning to the farther areas. A dense network or enough network coverage is
the backbone of an EEW system. Because of insufficient station coverage, the estimated
earthquake location is error-prone, which in turn may cause problems for EEW in terms
of estimating strong shaking for the affected areas. Seismic instrumentation for EEW has
improved significantly in the last few years considering the station coverage, data quality,
and related applications. Many countries including the USA, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and
South Korea have developed EEW systems and are issuing a warning to the public and
authorities. Several other countries, namely China, Turkey, Italy, and India are in process
of developing and testing the EEW system. This article discusses the challenges and future
EEW systems developed around the world along with different parameters used for EEW.
* Himanshu Mittal
himanshumitt10@gmail.com
Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Article Highlights
• This article aims to provide a comprehensive review related to the development
• The explicit emphasis is on the scientific development of EEW parameters
• The challenges and future scopes for the effective implementation of EEWS are dis-
cussed in terms of the correct location, the magnitude estimation, the region-specific
use of ground motion prediction equations, communication technologies, and general
public awareness
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... These systems are engineered to swiftly alert the populace upon the initial detection of seismic P-waves, preceding the emergence of more intense tremors. They are instrumental in diminishing the risks associated with earthquakes [1][2][3]. EEW systems demand both technical robustness and a thorough grasp of operational and management facets, thereby necessitating context-specific approaches tailored to the unique needs of different countries [3][4][5][6]. The customization of EEW systems takes into account the unique seismic characteristics and technological capacities of each region. ...
... They are instrumental in diminishing the risks associated with earthquakes [1][2][3]. EEW systems demand both technical robustness and a thorough grasp of operational and management facets, thereby necessitating context-specific approaches tailored to the unique needs of different countries [3][4][5][6]. The customization of EEW systems takes into account the unique seismic characteristics and technological capacities of each region. ...
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... With the continuous development of earthquake early warning technology, the earthquake early warning system has gradually evolved from Tao et al. Geoenvironmental Disasters (2024) 11:9 simple seismic instruments in the early days to highly automated, intelligent, and networked (Ide 2019;Allen 2017;Kumar et al. 2022). The physical quantities monitored have also evolved from surface displacements and seismic waves to parameters such as acceleration and geomagnetic fields (Cremen et al. 2020). ...
Study on the correlation between real-time GNSS landslide acceleration monitoring and earthquake response: a case of May 2, 2023, MW = 5.2 Baoshan earthquake, Yunnan
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IoT-Based Smart Sensors: The Key to Early Warning Systems and Rapid Response in Natural Disasters
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Development of region specific earthquake early warning scaling relations for the Garhwal region using observed and simulated datasets: a step forward to disaster mitigation
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An Early Warning System for Predicting Earthquakes
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  • Apr 2024
Earthquakes have long pose a vast danger to human existence and infrastructure. Over time, sizeable studies have been performed in the field of earthquake prediction, mainly on the improvement of an early warning machine. This essay aims to discover the background of earthquake prediction, the want for an early warning system, and the advancements made in this vicinity to mitigate the impact of seismic occasions. This chapter offers the development of a complicated and reliable early warning machine that utilizes a combination of seismic information analysis and device learning techniques. The goals of an early warning system for predicting earthquakes are to offer timely statistics to permit suitable actions, reduce the lack of existence and assets, and foster resilience in affected groups. The advancements in era and studies have provided us with the gear and expertise essential to construct a robust and reliable system that can save limitless lives and limit harm to infrastructure.
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Event Detection Techniques and Optimization for Earthquake Early Warning Application
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An efficient, robust, reliable Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) can play a vital role in hazard mitigation by reducing false and missed alarms. This study represents a comparative analysis of state-of-the-art real-time event detection techniques for the EEW. In real-time event detection, a trade-off between detection reliability and delay in detection exists dominantly. This trade-off is the motivation behind the implementation and performance optimization of event detection techniques, namely Short-time-average over Long-time-average (STA/LTA), Multi-window Algorithm (MWA), and Modified Energy Ratio (MER) for EEW applicability. Earthquake data from the Kyoshin Network (K-NET), Japan along with noise events recorded by the Seismic Sensing Nodes (SSN) at the NCR, India is used for analysis and validation of detection techniques for the EEW system. The critical parameters such as signal window duration and threshold for event declaration are optimized for the detection techniques. An introspection of their performance measures in terms of delay in detection and detection accuracy for optimized parameters is presented. The median delay in detection is best for STA/LTA (0.53[Formula: see text]s) followed by MER (0.55[Formula: see text]s) and MWA (3.23[Formula: see text]s). The comparative analysis shows that MER provides the best results among the candidate techniques with a normalized balanced accuracy of 0.98 followed by STA/LTA (0.97) and MWA (0.82).
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Earthquakes have become a popular research area because they have recently caused numerous problems in many countries. Also, they significantly impact preschool children. Children in the preschool age group, which is a critical period, are at risk from earthquakes, as they are a vulnerable group. Specifically, investigating the effects of the earthquake on preschool children is crucial in solving the problems they experience and putting forward policy recommendations, but there is no review study specific to this age group in the literature. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of the earthquake on preschool children. The effects of the earthquake, which takes place in a wide range, on preschool children are gathered, especially in the fields of social, psychological, health, and education. Challenges experienced by parents, difficulties in meeting basic needs, complex psychological problems, and changes such as migration are some of the critical issues preschool children experience after earthquakes.
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Overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Seismology
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The Scientific Landscape of November 23rd, 1980 Irpinia-Basilicata Earthquake: Taking Stock of (Almost) 40 Years of Studies
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Earthquake Early Warning Systems in Taiwan: Current Status
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Importance of real-time PGV in terms of lead-time and shakemaps: Results using 2018 ML 6.2 & 2019 ML 6.3 Hualien, Taiwan earthquakes
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Two earthquakes having almost the same magnitude occurred in the Hualien area of Taiwan in 2018 and 2019. The 2018 earthquake had a magnitude ML 6.2 produced severe destruction; however, the 2019 earthquake (ML=6.3) did not cause any severe damage. The P-Alert Strong Motion Network provides real-time shakemaps, in addition, to earthquake early warning (EEW) in terms of lead-time. Each instrument provides a different lead-time using peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV). During both the events, the instruments reported a lead-time of 1.5 to 8.0 s in the epicentral region. This network system also generated high-quality shakemaps during both earthquakes. The shakemaps showed that the higher PGAs are concentrated in the epicentral region for the 2018 and 2019 earthquakes. The lower PGA contour (≥ 25 gals) extended to a broader area, including Taipei, during the 2019 earthquake compared to the 2018 earthquake. However, PGV shakemaps display a different pattern. The higher PGV values (more than 17 cm/s) are observed in the epicentral region during the 2018 earthquake (locations suffering building collapse) compared to the 2019 earthquake, suggesting that PGV correlates better with damage distribution as compared to the PGA. The PGV shakemap, currently only available for the P-Alert network, provides crucial information that complements the PGA issued by the official agency in Taiwan.
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