Abstract
Abstract. A fundamental feature of any earthquake early warning system is the ability of rapidly broadcast earthquake information to reach a wide audience of potential end users and stakeholders, in an intuitive, customizable way. Smartphones and other mobile devices are nowadays continuously connected to the Internet and represent the ideal tools for earthquake alerts dissemination to inform a large number of users about the potential damaging shaking of an impending earthquake. Here we present a mobile app (named ISNet EWApp or simply EWApp) for Android devices which can receive the alerts generated by a network-based Early Warning system. Specifically, the app receives the earthquake alerts generated by the PRESTo EEWS, which is currently running on the accelerometric stations of the Irpinia Seismic Network (ISNet) in southern Italy. In the absence of alerts, EWApp displays the standard bulletin of seismic events that have occurred within the network. In the event of a relevant earthquake, the app has a dedicated module to predict the expected ground-shaking intensity and the available lead time at the user's position and to provide customized messages to inform the user about the proper reaction to adopt during the alert. We first present the architecture of both the network-based system and EWApp and then describe its essential operational modes. The app is designed in a way that is easily exportable to any other network-based early warning system.
Highlights
When an earthquake occurs the rapid assessment of its impact is essential for timely and appropriate emergency operations, such as securing people and crucial infrastructures exposed to serious damage effects
Earthquake early warning systems (EEWSs) are real-time modern information systems aimed at providing rapid notification of the potential damaging effects of an impending earthquake, through the rapid telemetry and processing of data from dense instrument arrays deployed in the source region of the event of concern or surrounding the target infrastructure
Several operational worldwide EEWSs are releasing earthquake alerts leveraging smartphone technologies, with dedicated applications which may leverage the smartphone as a broadcasting target or may even transform it into a seismic detector
Summary
When an earthquake occurs the rapid assessment of its impact is essential for timely and appropriate emergency operations, such as securing people and crucial infrastructures exposed to serious damage effects. The central server checks whether the number of received signals is anomalous and high relative to active smartphones located in the same area, and in that case an earthquake warning is issued to the network Within this context, we developed a mobile app for Android devices (smartphones, tablets and smartwatches) to receive the broadcast alerts issued by PRESTo (Satriano et al, 2010), which is the EEWS currently operative in southern Italy, aimed at detecting small to moderate earthquakes occurring in the Campania–Lucania Apennine region. Following the idea of similar tools, such as the user display (Böse et al, 2014) and the earthquake early warning display (Cauzzi et al, 2016), our EWApp is able to further elaborate the alerts generated by the backbone infrastructure, accounting for the current geographical position of the user in order to compute the amplitude and arrival time of damaging seismic waves In this way, the app represents an independent tool to compute the expected shaking that does not require www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/20/921/2020/. The potential area of interest for the EWApp users covers both the Irpinia seismic region and the surrounding area
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