White House Announces Commitment to Earthquake Early Warning Tech

President Barack Obama recently applauded the technological advances of earthquake early warning technology and signed an executive order requiring all federal buildings to be up to seismic safety code.

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(TNS) -- Buoyed by recent advances in technology, the federal government announced Tuesday that it is expanding its commitment to earthquake warning systems because they will save lives.

"The technology is ready today," said Richard Allen, director of Berkeley's seismological laboratory, at a White House Summit on Earthquake Resilience in Washington, D.C. "Hopefully we can move to a full-blown public warning system over the next few years."

Also on Tuesday, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to institute seismic safety codes for all federal buildings, similar to the executive order issued last year requiring flood protection for federal buildings near bodies of water.

Through the "ShakeAlert" early warning system, alerts can be sent at the speed of light -- 100,000 times faster than seismic waves travel through rock.

That system relies on hundreds of submerged refrigerator-sized sensors in places like the Berkeley Hills, some so sensitive that they can detect the gravitational pull of the moon.

Currently, the system has been in "production prototype" phase, meaning that the warnings sent to its 75 test users are not reliable enough to warrant action. But it is working -- for instance, giving San Francisco emergency officials eight seconds of warning that shaking from the 2014 Napa earthquake was on its way.

Now it is moving into an "operational" phase so that "beta users" such as BART can take steps such as slowing trains or moving them off elevated expressways, said Justin Pressfield, a spokesman for the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

Once fully operational, the system will be issued by the USGS directly to electronic systems and to individual smartphones and other delivery mechanisms. Eventually, the alerts will be automated, making it possible to shut down machinery, protect electrical and gas equipment, open elevators and bring trains to a halt.

In addition, the government wants to upgrade the network by adding more seismic sensors in California and expanding sensors in new locations, such as Oregon and Washington.

The system senses the earliest of two types of seismic waves. Because the first set of waves move much faster than the second set of waves (think of lightning that is visible before you hear thunder), it's possible to warn people of the more destructive secondary waves.

A warning would pop up on a phone or computer screen, saying something like "Earthquake expected in 20 seconds -- shaking expected." Warnings would be based on an electronic device's GPS location and would state the estimated size of the earthquake and recommended action.

Earthquake early warning systems are currently operating in several countries, including Japan, China, Turkey and Mexico.

"After four years of testing, the demonstration system has detect hundreds of earthquakes and, from this, has gained experience," USGS Director Suzette Kimball said at the summit. "This national network earthquake warning system is achievable and actionable."

Federal funding for the system was bumped up to $8.2 million for 2016. But fully implementing it will cost up to $38 million for new instruments, plus $16 million a year for operations.

The Palo Alto-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation on Tuesday announced $3.6 million in grants to advance and augment the ShakeAlert system, using a different approach than the current sensor system.

Its funding will advance research at UC Berkeley into a novel method to detect the shaking caused by earthquakes, harnessing the same sensors now used in smart phones to count our daily steps. In remote and rural parts of the nation without a network of sensors, this "crowd-sourced" solution could be very practical, according to the foundation.

The GPS sensors built into a phone's accelerometer -- which lets the phone know whether it is moving and if the orientation of the screen is correct -- could detect a pattern of seismic waves, UC Berkeley spokeswoman Robert Sanders said.

The Moore Foundation funding will also support research at two other universities.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are developing an electronic "humanlike" decision-making process that gathers information from seismic networks to issue prompt and reliable alerts. At the University of Washington, scientists are studying implementation of a network of sensors on the ocean floor.

"We know implementation of earthquake warnings will save lives and protect property," said Amy Pope, deputy assistant to the president at the Homeland Security Council. "It will give millions of people precious seconds to take action."

©2016 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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