Source Process-Related Delays in Earthquake Early Warning for Example Cases in Greece

Author(s):  
Nikolaos Vavlas ◽  
Anastasia A. Kiratzi ◽  
Zafeiria Roumelioti

ABSTRACT We explore a hypothetical zero-latency earthquake early warning (EEW) system in Greece, aiming to provide alerts before warning thresholds of the intensity of ground motion are exceeded. Within the seismotectonic context of Greece, both shallow- and intermediate-depth earthquakes (along the Hellenic subduction zone) are plausible and, thus, examined. Using regionally applicable attenuation relations, we combine and adjust the methodologies of Minson et al. (2018) and Hoshiba (2020) to examine what are the minimum magnitudes required to invoke the warning thresholds at the user site. With simple modeling, we examine how fast an alert can be issued and what is the available warning time when taking into account delays due to finite-fault rupture propagation, alongside other delays. These computations are merged with delays introduced due to the present-day configuration of the Greek national monitoring network (varying spatial density of permanent monitoring stations). This approach serves as a tool to assess the feasibility of an EEW system at specific sites and to redesign the national permanent monitoring network to serve such a system more effectively (we provide results for four sites.). Warning times for on-land crustal earthquakes are found to be shorter, whereas for intermediate-depth earthquakes in Greece an EEW system is feasible (provides warning times of several tens of seconds at large cities, e.g., on Crete Island) even with the current configuration of the national monitoring network, which is quite sparse in the southern part of the country. The current network configuration also provides sufficient early warning (e.g., of the order of 10 s for a warning threshold of 0.05g) at the center of Athens from earthquakes of the eastern Gulf of Corinth—a zone posing elevated hazard in the broader area of the Greek capital. Several additional assumptions and factors affecting the operability of an EEW system in Greece (i.e., source process complexity and uncertainty in attenuation laws) are also discussed.

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 530-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuo-Liang Wen ◽  
◽  
Tzay-Chyn Shin ◽  
Yih-Min Wu ◽  
Nai-Chi Hsiao ◽  
...  

The dense real-time earthquake monitoring network established in Taiwan is a strong base for the development of the earthquake early warning (EEW) system. In remarkable progress over the last decades, real-time earthquake warning messages are sent within 20 sec after an event using the regional EEW system with a virtual subnetwork approach. An onsite EEW approach using the first 3 sec of P waves has been developed and under online experimentation. Integrating regional and onsite systems may enable EEW messages to be issued within 10 sec after an event occurred in the near future. This study mainly discusses the methodology for determining the magnitude and ground motion of an event.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 5084
Author(s):  
Filippos Vallianatos ◽  
Andreas Karakonstantis ◽  
Nikolaos Sakelariou

The main goal of an Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS) is to alert before the arrival of damaging waves using the first seismic arrival as a proxy, thus becoming an important operational tool for real-time seismic risk management on a short timescale. EEWSs are based on the use of scaling relations between parameters measured on the initial portion of the seismic signal after the arrival of the first wave. To explore the plausibility of EEWSs around the Eastern Gulf of Corinth and Western Attica, amplitude and frequency-based parameters, such as peak displacement (Pd), the integral of squared velocity (IV 2) and the characteristic period (τc), were analyzed. All parameters were estimated directly from the initial 3 s, 4 s, and 5 s signal windows (tw) after the P arrival. While further study is required on the behavior of the proxy quantities, we propose that the IV 2 parameter and the peak amplitudes of the first seconds of the P waves present significant stability and introduce the possibility of a future on-site EEWS for areas affected by earthquakes located in the Eastern Gulf of Corinth and Western Attica. Parameters related to regional-based EEWS need to be further evaluated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Porras ◽  
Frédérick Massin ◽  
Mario Arroyo-Solórzano ◽  
Ivonne Arroyo ◽  
Lepolt Linkimer ◽  
...  

We analyze the performance of a prototype earthquake early warning system deployed at the National Seismological Network of Costa Rica in collaboration with the Swiss Seismological Service by presenting the real-time performance during six earthquakes (Mw 5.1-6.4) that took place during 2018 and 2019. We observe that, despite only limited efforts to optimize the existing network of 158 stations, for EEW purposes, the network density allows fast determination of source parameters using both the Virtual Seismologist and the Finite Fault Rupture Detector algorithms. Shallow earthquakes on or near-shore are routinely identified within 11–20 s of their occurrence. The warning times for the capital city of San Jose are of 43 s for epicenters located at 220 km, like for the Mw 6.4 Armuelles earthquake. On the other hand, during the time analyzed, the EEW system did not provide positive warning times for earthquakes at distances less than 40 km from San Jose. Even though large (Mw > 7) distant historical earthquakes have not caused heavy damage in San Jose, there is potential for developing an EEW system for Costa Rica, especially for the purposes of rapid earthquake notifications, disaster response management, and seismic risk mitigation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 757-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Xu ◽  
P. W. Burton ◽  
G.-A. Tselentis

Abstract. The feasibility of an earthquake early warning Shield in Greece is being explored as a European demonstration project. This will be the first early warning system in Europe. The island of Revithoussa is a liquid natural gas storage facility near Athens from which a pipeline runs to a gas distribution centre in Athens. The Shield is being centred on these facilities. The purpose here is to analyze seismicity and seismic hazard in relation to the Shield centre and the remote sensor sites in the Shield network, eventually to help characterize the hazard levels, seismic signals and ground vibration levels that might be observed or create an alert situation at a station. Thus this paper mainly gives estimation of local seismic hazard in the regional working area of Revithoussa by studying extreme peak ground acceleration (PGA) and magnitudes. Within the Shield region, the most important zone to be detected is WNW from the Shield centre and is at a relatively short distance (50 km or less), the Gulf of Corinth (active normal faults) region. This is the critical zone for early warning of strong ground shaking. A second key region of seismicity is at an intermediate distance (100 km or more) from the centre, the Hellenic seismic zone south or southeast from Peloponnisos. A third region to be detected would be the northeastern region from the centre and is at a relatively long distance (about 150 km), Lemnos Island and neighboring region. Several parameters are estimated to characterize the seismicity and hazard. These include: the 50-year PGA with 90% probability of not being exceeded (pnbe) using Theodulidis & Papazachos strong motion attenuation for Greece, PGANTP; the 50-year magnitude and also at the 90% pnbe, M50 and MP50, respectively. There are also estimates of the earthquake that is most likely to be felt at a damaging intensity level, these are the most perceptible earthquakes at intensities VI, VII and VIII with magnitudes MVI, MVII and MVIII. Example results (from many) include the corresponding parameters describing the hazard for Revithoussa as follows: PGANTP: 203 cm s- 2 , M50: 6.5, Mp50: 6.9, MVI: 5.8, MVII: 6.1 and MVIII: 6.4. These data are also useful in selecting expected alert-signals i.e. examples of strong ground vibration histories that might be expected at a Shield station in the alert situation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 361-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Allen ◽  
Diego Melgar

Earthquake early warning (EEW) is the delivery of ground shaking alerts or warnings. It is distinguished from earthquake prediction in that the earthquake has nucleated to provide detectable ground motion when an EEW is issued. Here we review progress in the field in the last 10 years. We begin with EEW users, synthesizing what we now know about who uses EEW and what information they need and can digest. We summarize the approaches to EEW and gather information about currently existing EEW systems implemented in various countries while providing the context and stimulus for their creation and development. We survey important advances in methods, instrumentation, and algorithms that improve the quality and timeliness of EEW alerts. We also discuss the development of new, potentially transformative ideas and methodologies that could change how we provide alerts in the future. ▪ Earthquake early warning (EEW) is the rapid detection and characterization of earthquakes and delivery of an alert so that protective actions can be taken. ▪ EEW systems now provide public alerts in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and alerts to select user groups in India, Turkey, Romania, and the United States. ▪ EEW methodologies fall into three categories, point source, finite fault, and ground motion models, and we review the advantages of each of these approaches. ▪ The wealth of information about EEW uses and user needs must be employed to focus future developments and improvements in EEW systems.


Author(s):  
Jessica R. Murray ◽  
Eric M. Thompson ◽  
Annemarie S. Baltay ◽  
Sarah E. Minson

ABSTRACT We identify aspects of finite-source parameterization that strongly affect the accuracy of estimated ground motion for earthquake early warning (EEW). EEW systems aim to alert users to impending shaking before it reaches them. The U.S. West Coast EEW system, ShakeAlert, currently uses two algorithms based on seismic data to characterize the earthquake’s location, magnitude, and origin time, treating it as a point or line source. From this information, ShakeAlert calculates shaking intensity and alerts locations where shaking estimates exceed a threshold. Several geodetic EEW algorithms under development would provide 3D finite-fault information. We investigate conditions under which this information produces sufficiently better intensity estimates to potentially improve alerting. Using scenario crustal and subduction interface sources, we (1) identify the most influential source geometry parameters for an EEW algorithm’s shaking forecast, and (2) assess the intensity alert thresholds and magnitude ranges for which more detailed source characterization affects alert accuracy. We find that alert regions determined using 3D-source representations of correct magnitude and faulting mechanism are generally more accurate than those obtained using line sources. If a line-source representation is used and magnitude is calculated from the estimated length, then incorrect length estimates significantly degrade alert region accuracy. In detail, the value of 3D-source characterization depends on the user’s chosen alert threshold, tectonic regime, and faulting style. For the suite of source models we tested, the error in shaking intensity introduced by incorrect geometry could reach levels comparable to the intrinsic uncertainty in ground-motion calculations (e.g., 0.5–1.3 modified Mercalli intensity [MMI] units for MMI 4.5) but, especially for crustal sources, was often less. For subduction interface sources, 3D representations substantially improved alert area accuracy compared to line sources, and incorrect geometry parameters were more likely to cause error in calculated shaking intensity that exceeded uncertainties.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 1904-1923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela I. Chung ◽  
Men-Andrin Meier ◽  
Jennifer Andrews ◽  
Maren Böse ◽  
Brendan W. Crowell ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT During July 2019, a sequence of earthquakes, including an Mw 6.4 foreshock and an Mw 7.1 mainshock, occurred near Ridgecrest, California. ShakeAlert, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake early warning system being developed for the U.S. West Coast, was operational during this time, although public alerting was only available within Los Angeles County. ShakeAlert created alert messages for the two largest events and for many of the larger aftershocks. In this study, we dissect log files and replay data through the system to reconstruct the sequence of events and analyze the performance of the system during that period. Although the system performed reasonably well overall, the sequence also revealed various issues and short comings that will be addressed in impending and future system upgrades. ShakeAlert detected and characterized both the Mw 6.4 and Mw 7.1 earthquakes within 6.9 s of their origin times and created alert messages that were available to ShakeAlert’s pilot users. No public alerts were sent out by the ShakeAlertLA cell phone app (the only publicly available alerting method at the time), because the predicted shaking for Los Angeles County was below the app’s alerting threshold of modified Mercalli intensity 4.0. For the Mw 6.4 event, this was accurate. For the Mw 7.1 event, public alerts for Los Angeles County were warranted, but ShakeAlert underpredicted the shaking levels, because both the point-source and finite-fault algorithms underestimated the magnitude of the earthquake by 0.8 units. A number of software and hardware issues that were responsible for the magnitude underestimation of the mainshock have been identified and will be addressed in future ShakeAlert releases. We also analyze the hypothetical alerting performance of ShakeAlert had public alerting been available throughout southern California.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérick Massin ◽  
John Clinton ◽  
Maren Böse

The Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at ETH has been developing methods and open-source software for Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) for more than a decade and has been using SeisComP for earthquake monitoring since 2012. The SED has built a comprehensive set of SeisComP modules that can provide EEW solutions in a quick and transparent manner by any seismic service operating SeisComP. To date, implementations of the Virtual Seismologist (VS) and Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) EEW algorithms are available. VS provides rapid EEW magnitudes building on existing SeisComP detection and location modules for point-source origins. FinDer matches growing patterns of observed high-frequency seismic acceleration amplitudes with modeled templates to identify rupture extent, and hence can infer on-going finite-fault rupture in real-time. Together these methods can provide EEW for all event dimensions from moderate to great, if a high quality, EEW-ready, seismic network is available. In this paper, we benchmark the performance of this SeisComP-based EEW system using recent seismicity in Switzerland. Both algorithms are observed to be similarly fast and can often produce first EEW alerts within 4–6 s of origin time. In real time performance, the median delay for the first VS alert is 8.7 s after origin time (56 earthquakes since 2014, from M2.7 to M4.6), and 7 s for FinDer (10 earthquakes since 2017, from M2.7 to M4.3). The median value for the travel time of the P waves from event origin to the fourth station accounts for 3.5 s of delay; with an additional 1.4 s for real-time data sample delays. We demonstrate that operating two independent algorithms provides redundancy and tolerance to failures of a single algorithm. This is documented with the case of a moderate M3.9 event that occured seconds after a quarry blast, where picks from both events produced a 4 s delay in the pick-based VS, while FinDer performed as expected. Operating on the Swiss Seismic Network, that is being continuously optimised for EEW, the SED-ETHZ SeisComP EEW system is achieving performance that is comparable to operational EEW systems around the world.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Massin ◽  
John Clinton ◽  
Roman Racine ◽  
Maren Bose ◽  
Yara Rossi ◽  
...  

<p>The national seismic networks in Central America have been developing network-based early warning since 2016 for Nicaragua, 2018 for El Salvador and 2019 for Costa Rica. This effort is part of a project with the Swiss Seismological Service (ETH Zurich) including funds for accelerograph deployment. At each network, delay for first earthquake parameter estimations have been significantly reduced by optimizing data acquisition, metadata quality, and configuration of the EEW algorithms implemented in SeisComP3, i.e. Virtual Seismologist and the Finite fault rupture Detector. Issues remain with significant numbers of deployed instrumentation that for a variety of reasons, do not optimally contribute to the EEW systems. Building on our experience so far, we design national network upgrades that will optimize the earthquake early warning performance in the Central America region, mitigating the current issues with velocimeter clipping during large events, datalogger delays, and incomplete network coverage. The new instruments have been selected after testing all available EEW-capable accelerographs natively compatible with SeisComP3 including class A force balance accelerometers as well as MEMs. To justify our instrument selection, we summarize the performance of these different instruments. We model and discuss reference maps for performance expectations, and present planned instrument vaults. Our primary focus is on minimizing first alert times but we also wish to accentuate the broad value of the network upgrade for seismological monitoring showing changes in the magnitude of completeness in the region. We demonstrate the value of the network upgrade for earthquake early warning with real-time processing simulation using synthetic data for the maximum magnitude earthquake expected for the Central America subduction zone.</p>


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