ShakeAlert aims to improve public safety – news – Taft Midway Driller – Taft, CA

ShakeAlert® is not perfect, but it is a work in progress with the potential to significantly improve overall safety. This was the word from Robert Michael De Groot of the USGS Bureau of Seismology.

The alert went off in a very general way on May 21, when people in Ridgecrest and elsewhere received a false warning that an earthquake was on the way.

De Groot, the broker who asked questions about ShakeAlert®, said that the alert was sent in error and the issues that have caused it have since been fixed. He explained how the false alarm happened.

“It was about the actual ShakeAlert® system in terms of detection and treatment centers,” he said. “It happened in a place where our IT team was working mainly to improve the system.”

De Groot said that the false alarm went out on only one channel, for wireless emergency alerts, and no one knew that the alert had been sent until some time after that.

He said the delay in the follow-up was due to the fact that “it took us some time to know what happened.”

De Groot said the problem was primarily an IT error and not a scientific mistake that has been diagnosed and corrected ever since.

He explained that “there was no earthquake, and there was no actual event in the field that led to the operation of the system.”

“This was the first time that we had to do this, and it is the first process of sending a really wrong message to people. We haven’t done that before,” he added.

De Groot said that errors like these “are only part of the learning process”, but he understands the reaction of people who panic when receiving the alert.

“I am totally with the people who received the message and felt justified fear about it,” he said.

De Groot said the system is still in test mode and “there is always an opportunity to get out the wrong alert. This is the nature of the system, but this particular problem has been solved.”

Receive alerts after an earthquake?

Then there are people who complain about receiving the alert after the earthquake. This, unfortunately, is an unavoidable possibility due to the limits of earthquake reporting.

“There is a really good chance that if you are close to the source of the earthquake, you will likely receive this alert after the vibration reaches your location,” de Groot said.

This relates to the earthquake transmission rate and the time required to detect the earthquake.

The closer you get to the center of an earthquake, the faster you will feel the earthquake and this can happen more quickly than the time required to process and send the warning.

“If I were to head the earthquake, there wouldn’t be a fast enough system,” de Groot said.

This is why preventive action is so important. “If you’re feeling shaky, take a realistic protective cap and wait.”

De groot added that ShakeAlert® “was never intended as a panacea” and the hope is that people will continue to take appropriate precautions.

ShakeAlert® Earthquake Earth Early Warning System is implemented across the three states of West Coast, California, Oregon, and Washington. California’s public delivery alert system is only tested, but will eventually be used by the other two states.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused some delays, but the hope is to start testing the warning system in Oregon and Washington sometime in 2021.

California information is routed through various apps, but all earthquake alert data is from USGS.

Over 1000 seismometers in the three states pick up ground movement and send this information to one of three treatment centers: one in Pasadena, one in the Gulf region, and one in Seattle.

In short, this information is processed very quickly and a decision is taken to issue an alert. If an alert is issued, USGS essentially fills the information and delivers it to the people who run the applications.

De Groot said there are three apps in California, one developed by the City of Los Angeles that only operates in Los Angeles County, and extensive statewide alerts: QuakeAlertUSA from Early Warning Labs, and Myshake outside UC Berkeley. They all consume USGS data when sending an alert.

De Groot said: “The score line we use is that they are all supported by Shake Alert.”

USGS uses a consistent formula, but the alert may look different depending on the providers and mobile applications of users.

ShakeAlert® operates in California and produces alerts for some time.

General mobile notification is only part of what ShakeAlert® does. The information also goes to everyone from BART in the Gulf region, which uses the alert to slow down their vehicles, to the LA Metro which does something similar. More than 60 partners use data to deliver alerts or cause an automatic thing like slowing the train or telling a bus to slow down the bus.

In addition, de Groot said, another great goal is to get people to react quickly when they receive texts. The human element remains essential, and people are urged to take precautions to drop, cover and stick to the first cover.

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