In California's Coachella Valley around Palm Springs, a state-of-the-art, first-in-the-world earthquake early warning system in now installed and operational. Twelve locations are now in place with 120 sites planned, all meant to detect an earthquake and give people a chance to get under a table, or in the case of a fire station, get the engines outside of the building.
Created by a Silicon Valley startup, QuakeGuard sensors are designed to detect the initial, or "P" energy waves given off by every quake, even though it's only the later, or "S" waves that do all the damage. The time in-between the two waves varies depending on the proximity to the epicenter and as the first sensor closest to the quake goes off, it can offer advance notice -- from a few seconds to a full minute-- to other locations farther away.
The system can also be set to automatically open fire station doors, and water and gas valves for municipalities could be shut off. Back-up generators for hospitals could be turned on and, most importantly, warn school kids to duck and take cover. During a tour of a Palm Springs Fire Station, Tom Kirk from the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, says, “For this fire station, doors roll up; for a school, an alarm might sound, teachers tell the kids to duck and cover; for a hospital, maybe backup generators go on.”
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7 comments:
I hope they make the signal public through the internet or radio so consumer warning devices could be built.
a few to 60 seconds helps few; it might in the distant future help with infrastructure.
i can't help but to say this is already in place... its called twitter.
http://xkcd.com/723/
p-waves are not detectable by humans, so no - twitter won't help. however, a system should be setup so that a message goes out to all portable devices. something like the emergency broadcasting system, only for cell phones,etc.
One can get severe weather alerts pushed to smart phones today. They're the text of what's broadcast. The alerts sometimes arrive on the phone a few seconds before the weather radio or sirens are activated. A similar earthquake alert app would be valuable to friends and family of those in the affected area, as well as those in the danger zone.
Better make damn sure the EBS system is hack-resistant, just a single false alarm can cost millions in lost time, induced traffic accidents from abrupt braking, etc.
State-of-the-art? Maybe. First-in-the-world? Behind by several years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japan)
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