METHODOLOGY FOR A KINEMATIC MODEL OF SEISMIC EARLY WARNING SYSTEM ABOUT CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

The destructive earthquakes generated huge losses and human victims. As for the moment the time of impending strong seismic event is unpredictable, during the last years – new global innovation is under development – the seismic early warning systems (SEWS). All of them signalize the population and/or governmental bodies and after the earthquake starts just providing information that the seismic event is fact, to expect stronger shakings and some very fast measures to be performed – for example NPP’s reactors stop, as well as superfast trains, chemical production, gas and oil pipeline disconnection, etc. In lucky cases some people can react (especially in the areas of low buildings) and to evacuate effective in the time domain of few seconds, thus saving their lives. Such system is in operation in Japan since 2007 and some other countries also develop their own SEWS. The present investigation is targeted to the methodology development of so called kinematic SEWS. They are using a fundamental property of the body seismic waves P and S. As it is well known from the theory, the P-waves are faster and less destructive than S-waves. This property gives the possibility to use the detection of the P waves as important signal that after a while (the time domain depends on the distance between the seismic source and the investigated site) the slower (1.41 times) more destructive S waves will arrive and struck the infrastructure. Our previous experience of the developed SEWS (for example for Baku and Venice) gives the possibility to upgrade the modeling methodology extending to the formalized algorithm and accuracy estimations, especially for the critical infrastructure (for example NPP).