Research Projects

The rapid increase in population and industrial growth in high hazard and vulnerable areas leads to a continuous rise in the expected rate of fatalities every year. Although natural phenomena like earthquakes are unpredictable and unavoidable, a real-time earthquake information system that has the potential to provide a warning prior to significant ground shaking referred to as Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) System is required. With the development of such an EEW system, the risk can be reduced by providing in-time warning for disaster mitigation. The EEW system is in place in the countries like Japan, Taiwan and Mexico where the seismic hazard level is similar to that of India. Considering the urgent need of the EEW system, IIT Roorkee approached the Ministry of Earth Science where a pilot project on EEW from MoES was sanctioned in 2014. This system has already seen its success which is now being operated by Uttarakhand Government. The system consists of 184 sensors deployed in Uttarakhand for giving warnings to the population within a radius of about 200 km. The software part of this imported system has been developed in IIT Roorkee. As the whole Himalaya, which falls in Seismic Zone IV and V as per the IS Code, is having the potential of generating moderate to great earthquakes many more such systems have to be deployed in India but the systems are to be imported. The lack of development of seismic instrumentation in India is inhibiting such deployments where the instruments are being imported which affects the disaster mitigation and management strategies. An endeavor has been made by the team of the investigators of this proposal to develop parts of the system out of which some are already developed to prototype in IIT Roorkee. This project envisages the development of a full indigenous EEW system so that the same may be deployed in India especially in the Himalayan ranges. The investigators have the requisite expertise in earthquake engineering. seismology, geophysics, electronics, communication, software and hardware development to develop such a system. The project also incorporates in-house production of low-cost sensors and sirens, the development of EEW algorithms and indigenous smartphone apps for dissemination of warnings to the public. Some of the prototypes of hardware have been checked and validated, alpha version of the software has been checked and the beta version is running for the Uttarakhand EEW system. The more advanced versions are in progress of development.

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The EEW system will be low cost and will be issuing smart warning from the earthquakes occurring in seismically active zones. The low cost indiginious EEW system is almost ready with prototyes of the accelerometers and sirens ready. The DAS is under progress. The software is already tested and will be deplyed once the DAS is ready

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M/s Pinnacle Geosystems, Delhi