Earthquake Early Warning Systems

Abstract

Because of Taiwan’s unique geographical environment, earthquake disasters occur frequently in Taiwan. The Central Weather Bureau collated earthquake data from between 1901 and 2006 (Central Weather Bureau, 2007) and found that 97 earthquakes had occurred, of which, 52 resulted in casualties. The 921 Chichi Earthquake had the most profound impact. Because earthquakes have instant destructive power and current scientific technologies cannot provide precise early warnings in advance, earthquake prevention is crucial. The earthquake early warning system can provide seconds to tens of seconds of warning time before an earthquake strikes. This paper introduces the earthquake early warning system build by Taiwan National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering and a practice case happened in Yilan City, Taiwan.

Keywords

• Earthquake
• disaster
• earthquake early warning system