Experts suggest early quake warning system in city

SHILLONG: Shillong, which is surrounded by seismic faults, is sitting on an earthquake-prone zone and an early warning system can be useful in reducing the extent of damages, said experts at a programme at State Convention Centre on Monday.
Dominik Lang, Earthquake Hazard and Risk at Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) in Norway, said, “Some of the faults have never created a bigger earthquake in our lifetime but history shows that there are earthquakes happening somewhere in the world suddenly in a place where we haven’t had experienced earthquakes before,” he said at the one-day workshop on development and implementation of a real-time Earthquake Loss Information System for Shillong (ELISA).
Referring to the North East, Lang pointed out that the region has witnessed the most severe earthquakes in the entire South East Asia.
With rapid urbanisation around the globe, earthquake poses serious threat to life and property, particularly in areas located on active faults, said PK Ryngnga, Assistant Professor of Geography at NEHU.
According to her, an early warning system can be useful for reducing hazards if the spatial relation between cities and
sources is favourable for such warning and citizens are trained to respond to warning messages.
“An earthquake early warning system forewarns an urban area of a forthcoming strong shaking normally with a few seconds to a few tens of seconds of warning time, i.e. before the arrival of the destructive S-wave part of the strong ground motion,” Ryngnga said.
“Even a few seconds of advance warning time will be useful for pre-programmed emergency measures for various critical facilities such as rapid transit vehicles and high speed trains to avoid potential derailment,” she added.
Speaking on ELISA, Ryngnga said it would be useful to minimise fire hazards, control shutdown of high technological manufacturing operations and also to safeguard computer facilities to avoid loss of vital data bases.
The ELISA project will be conducted in three phases. The first phase will focus on scenario based ELE for Shillong, the second on installation of local seismic strong motion network and the third will be implementation of real time ELE system (ELISA), said Lang.
The workshop explored the practical approach to earthquake early warning system in Shillong, which has the Himalayan collision zone to the north and the Indo-Burman subduction zone to the east, said the NEHU professor.
State PWD, NEHU, Meghalaya Architects Forum, Assam Engineering College and Department of Civil Engineering participated in the workshop.