Implementation of the EPIC Earthquake Early Warning System in the Bursa Province (Türkiye) and Its Surroundings

Abstract

Earthquake early warning systems aim to reduce the potential danger by providing a warning in the seconds before strong ground shaking occurs. In this study, we implemented EPIC, an early warning algorithm for Bursa province and its surroundings, which is a seismically active region. We replayed 104 earthquakes of M ≥ 3.5, which occurred in and around the study area between 2012 and 2021. We derived period and amplitude-based magnitude-scaling relationships using peak displacement amplitude (Pd) and predominant period (Tpmax) parameters of the first 4 s of P-wave arrivals. We investigated the performance of magnitude-scaling relationships through testing with real-time data. We observed an improvement when comparing the magnitude estimates made with the newly developed equations with the default equations used for California. We have also found that magnitude estimation with Pd gives better results than Tpmax for estimating the accurate final magnitude. We aim to adapt the EPIC early warning system, implemented for Bursa province and its surroundings, specifically for each region of Türkiye where the earthquake risk is high.

Keywords

• EPIC
• earthquake early warning systems
• earthquake risk reduction
• magnitude estimation
• Bursa province
• Marmara region