Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, are working to improve the warning time to the public in the event of an earthquake to 40 seconds or more.
Institute’s Earthquake Engineering Department sends out warnings just seconds before an earthquake. Professor M.L. Sharma, head of the Institute for Early Detection of Earthquake, has incubated a start-up Seismic Hazard and Risk Investigations which is working on developing a warning syste
He said, “We have installed a sensor in a highly seismic zone between Uttarkashi and Dharchula (in Uttarakhand). Whenever it detects a seismic wave, the signals are sent to a monitoring system installed in our earthquake laboratory.”
A warning is sent to the public through their free app Early Earthquake Warning only if the earthquake is greater than magnitude five.
Sharma stressed that “it is not enough to send out warnings to people before an earthquake. We must ensure that more and more buildings are made of earthquake-resistant material”.
Free app Early Earthquake Warning
According to Sharma, in the past two years, their system has sent out 12 warnings, most of them internally, and one recently to the public around the time of the Nepal earthquake in January this year.
He says “During the recent earthquake in Nepal, we sent out warnings to the public through our app and were able to warn people about 40 seconds in advance, we are now trying to improve the warning system through our start-up”.
Sharma explained how the Earthquake warning mechanism works, when an earthquake occurs, two types of waves come out of the ground one that moves at a higher speed and the other that moves a bit slower.
Currently, the main part of the earthquake monitoring system is installed in Uttarkashi, but in the future the team plans to install several sensors in other regions, all connected to the main monitoring system at the IIT Roorkee laboratory.
Written by: Vaishali Verma
Read Now:New theory reveal that water arrived on Earth from deep space and asteroid impacts were responsible
