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Earthquake Early Warning System in Southern Italy

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Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

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Definition of the Subject

The origin of the term “early warning” probably goes back to the first decades of the last century. However, the first practical use ofan “early warning” strategy was military and it was developed during the “cold war” years as a countermeasure to thepotential threat from intercontinental ballistic missiles. The objective of these systems was to give an alert to target areas as soon as a missilewas detected by a radar system or a launch was detected by a satellite system. In this context the term “lead time” was defined as thetime elapsing between the detection of the missile and theestimated impact on the target.

In the last decades the use of the term “early warning” greatly expanded. It is used with small, but significant, variations in varioustypes of risks, from epidemiological, to economic, social, and of course all the types of natural and environmental risks.

In fact, in these contexts, including some natural risks such as hydro‐geological and...

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Abbreviations

Data transmission system :

A multi‐component device aimed at the transmission of seismic signals over a distance, also denoted as a telecommunication system. Each data transmission system consists of two basic elements: a transmitter that takes information and converts it to an electromagnetic signal and a receiver that receives the signal and converts it back into usable information.

Modern telecommunication systems are two-way and a single device, a transceiver, acts as both a transmitter and receiver. Transmitted signals can either be analogue or digital. In an analogue signal, the signal is varied continuously with respect to the information. In a digital signal, the information is encoded as a set of discrete, binary values. During transmission, the information contained in analogue signals will be degraded by noise, while, unless the noise exceeds a certain threshold, the information contained in digital signals will remain intact. This represents a key advantage of digital signals over analogue signals. A collection of transmitters, receivers or transceivers that communicate with each other is a telecommunication network. Digital networks may consist of one or more routers that route data to the correct user.

Earthquake early warning system (EEWS):

A real-time, modern information system that is able to provide rapid notification of the potential damaging effects of an impending earthquake, through rapid telemetry and processing of data from dense instrument arrays deployed in the source region of the event of concern (regional EEWS) or surrounding the target infrastructure (site‐specific EEWS). A “regional” EEWS is based on a dense sensor network covering a portion or the entirety of an area that is threatened by earthquakes. The relevant source parameters (event location and magnitude) are estimated from the early portion of recorded signals and are used to predict, with a quantified confidence, a ground motion intensity measure at a distant site where a target structure of interest is located. On the other hand, a “site‐specific” EEWS consists of a single sensor or an array of sensors deployed in the proximity of the target structure that is to be alerted, and whose measurements of amplitude and predominant period on the initial P‑wave motion are used to predict the ensuing peak ground motion (mainly related to the arrival of S and surface waves) at the same site.

Earthquake location :

An earthquake location specifies the spatial position and time of occurrence for an earthquake. The location may refer to the earthquake hypocenter and corresponding origin time, a mean or centroid of some spatial or temporal characteristic of the earthquake, or another property of the earthquake that can be spatially and temporally localized.

Earthquake magnitude :

The magnitude is a parameter used by seismologists to quantify the earthquake size. The Richter magnitude scale, or more correctly, local magnitude ML scale, assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. It is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the combined horizontal amplitude of the largest displacement from zero on a seismometer output. Measurements have no limits and can be either positive or negative.

Introduced by the Japanese seismologist Aki in 1962, the seismic moment is the present‐day physical parameter used to characterize the earthquake strength. It represents the scalar moment of one the couples of forces producing the dislocation at an earthquake fault and it is measured from the asymptotic DC level on displacement Fourier spectra of recorded seismic signals.

Probability density function  – PDF:

A function in one or more dimensional space X that (i) when integrated over some interval \( { \Delta x } \) in X gives a probability of occurrence of any event within \( { \Delta x } \), and (ii) has unit integral over space X, where X represents a space of possible events.

Seismic data‐logger :

A core element of a digital seismic station, whose aim is to record the analogue signals from seismic sensors and convert them in digital form with an assigned sampling frequency. Ground motion signals acquired by seismic sensors are pre‐amplified and anti‐aliasing filtered in a data‐logger before they are digitalized through an AD (analog-to‐digital) converter. The main technical features of a modern data‐logger are the number of available channels, the allowed sampling frequencies, the dynamic range, the digitizer clock type, the storage capacity (PCMCIA, internal flash and/or hard disk, USB, …), network interfaces (ethernet, wireless lan, or ppp) and power consumption.

Seismic hazard :

The probability that at a given site, a strong motion parameter (generally the peak ground acceleration) exceeds an assigned value in a fixed time period. When the seismic hazard is computed for an extended region it is generally represented as a map. The hazard map is commonly computed for a constant probability level (10%, 5% or 2%) and a given time window (50 years). It represents the spatial variation of the peak ground acceleration (expressed in percentage of gravity g) to be exceeded in the given period with the chosen probability level.

Earthquake early warning systems can provide a mean for the evaluation of real-time hazard maps which evolve with time, as new information about source location, magnitude and predicted peak ground motion parameters are available soon after the earthquake occurrence.

Seismic sensors :

Instruments used to record the ground vibration produced by natural and artificial sources, generally denoted as seismometers. A seismometer measures the relative motion between its frame and a suspended mass. Early seismometers used optics, or motion‐amplifying mechanical linkages. The motion was recorded as scratches on smoked glass, or exposures of light beams on photographic paper. In modern instruments the proof mass is held motionless by an electronic negative feedback loop that drives a coil. The distance moved, speed and acceleration of the mass are directly measured. Most modern seismometers are broadband, working on a wide range of frequencies (0.01–100 Hz). Another type of seismometer is a digital strong‐motion seismometer, or accelerometer , which measures soil acceleration. Due to its relatively high dynamic range, the accelerometer can record unsaturated strong amplitude signals at close distances from a large earthquake. This data is essential to understand how an earthquake affects human structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli “Federico II” (RISSC-Lab), Napoli, Italy

    Aldo Zollo, Claudio Martino, Claudio Satriano & Paolo Gasparini

  2. Osservatorio Vesuviano, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (RISSC-Lab), Napoli, Italy

    Giovanni Iannaccone, Vincenzo Convertito, Luca Elia, Maria Lancieri & Emanuel Weber

  3. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale, Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Napoli, Italy

    Iunio Iervolino

  4. Alomax Scientific, Mouans‐Sartoux, France

    Anthony Lomax

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  1. Aldo Zollo
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  1. RAMTECH LIMITED, 122 Escalle Lane, Larkspur, CA, 94939, USA

    Robert A. Meyers Ph. D. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

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Zollo, A. et al. (2009). Earthquake Early Warning System in Southern Italy. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_147

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