Earthquake Early Warning Systems

During the past few decades of the 20th and the first years of the present Century, economic losses and human casualties due to natural disasters increased exponentially on our planet, mainly because of the increased density of population and industry in high hazard areas. Although the prediction of earthquakes is not practicable yet, the present technology allows a prompt identification of the onset of any dangerous seismic event before it hits an urban area. Hence early warning- and rapid disaster information systems are becoming important means for strengthening the resilience of our society against the negative consequences of extreme seismic events. Earthquake early warning can provide an alert within a few tens of seconds in advance. This small lead time may be used to minimize property damage and loss of lives in metropolitan areas and to aid emergency response. The book provides information on the major EEW systems in operation and on the state of the art of the different blocks forming an EW system: the rapid detection and estimation of the earthquake’s focal parameters, the signal transmission, the engineering interface and the information reliability/false alarm problem.

• Geoinformationssysteme
• Monitoring
• early warning
• earthquake
• earthquake damage reduction
• rapid disaster information
• seismic
• landscape/regional and urban planning

• Department of Physics, University of Napoli, Napoli, Italy

  Paolo Gasparini

• Department of Structural Engineering, University of Napoli, Napoli, Italy

  Gaetano Manfredi

• GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

  Jochen Zschau

Paolo Gasparini, is Full Professor of Geophysics at the University of Napoli Federico II and President of Center of Competence AMRA. He is Advisor for Environment to the EC Commissioner of Research. He was President of IAVCEI. His activities include the assessment of volcanic and seismic hazard and risk. He is on the steering committee of the EC SAFER project on seismic early warning.

Gaetano Manfredi, is Full Professor of Structural Design at the University of Napoli Federico II and Head of the Department of Structural Engineering. He is President of RELUIS (The Italian Network of University Seismic Engineering Labs) and a member of the Board of the Directors of AMRA. His activity is focused on seismic engineering and innovative materials. He is WP leader of the SAFER project.

Jochen Zschau is Full professor at the University of Potsdam and Director of the Department "Physics of the Earth" at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ). His scientific focus is on earthquake and volcanoes research. He was vice president of the European Seismological Commission. He is one of the leaders of the Indonesian-German Tsunami Early Warning System being set up in the Indian Ocean. He is coordinator of the EC SAFER project on seismic early warning.

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