Deadly earthquakes trigger search for faster alerts

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Researchers in Europe have identified an underground signal that may be a precursor to powerful earthquakes.

Dr. Quentin Peltieri has some good news regarding an often grim topic: earthquakes.

Belletri, a researcher at the French National Institute for Research on Sustainable Development (IRD), believes it may one day be possible to predict strong earthquakes minutes or even hours before they occur.

Signal detection

Earthquakes are usually caused by the movement of two tectonic plates on either side of deep underground geological fractures known as fault lines.

“The fault starts slipping sometime before the earthquake,” Beltieri said. “The question is: Is this being accelerated in a split second or is it something that takes longer and can be tracked?”

Based on past experiences, Pelletieri has reason to believe that gradual slides do occur. Now he may have more reasons.

Peltieri and his IRD colleague, Dr. Jean-Mathieu Noquet, discovered a signal that could, in theory, be used to give a warning about strong shaking in advance.

The project, called EARLI, began in January 2021 and is scheduled to continue until 2027 after a one-year extension.

Predicting frustration

Earthquakes occur all over the world on a daily basis. Most of them are too small to be felt on the surface.

Larger earthquakes, greater than magnitude 6, are often deadly. For example, the attack that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023 killed more than 50,000 people and left about 1.5 million others homeless.

Over the past two decades, earthquakes have killed about 1 million people worldwide, according to EARLI.

Not only can earthquakes be measured accurately, but where they tend to strike is also known. Southern Europe, including the Mediterranean region, Japan, Indonesia, Chile, and the United States in California and Alaska, are all hotspots.

Until now, scientists have been unable to identify any detectable sign of the fault's gradual slippage.

Suspecting that any such signal might be too weak to be picked up by seismometers, Blairy and Nocquet instead used high-speed GPS data from more than 3,000 stations around the world.

GPS information is an alternative to seismic data to measure how much the ground moves during an earthquake and between earthquakes.

The GPS information included data recorded hours before each of the 90 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher.

This approach has paid off. The researchers found a barely noticeable, but still statistically significant, pattern that begins to emerge two hours before earthquakes occur near the eventual epicenter.

“It's just a small blip, but you can't find it randomly in other places at another time,” Peltieri said. “It's very interesting.”

He said more research is needed to expand understanding of the observed signal and consider the feasibility of earthquake prediction.

One obstacle is that current earthquake monitoring tools lack the coverage and resolution needed for this type of research, according to Peltieri.

The solution here may be to connect acoustic sensors to the seabed and underground fiber optic cables that form the backbone of today's global communications system.

Smaller and faster indicator

Meanwhile, EARLI researchers have a more modest goal: speeding up existing alerts people have on their cell phones minutes before an earthquake strikes.

These alerts are based on the seismic waves generated by the earthquake and recorded by seismometers.

Beltieri and his team seek to improve such alerts by using seismometers to measure something else: disturbances in Earth's gravitational field caused by massive movements of rocks.

While this index is much smaller than seismic waves, it is faster.

Beltieri and his team used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze this type of data and estimate the risk of a potential tsunami.

The current tsunami warning system needs 20 to 30 minutes for the first estimate. The EARLI method, although still , requires one minute.

“The goal is to make early warning systems much faster,” Beltieri said.

Damage control

Reducing the consequences of earthquakes is also a research priority.

This was the focus of another project. It was called RISE, and it ran from September 2019 until May 2023.

“Our starting point was to make Europe more resilient to earthquakes,” said Professor Stefan Wimmer, Director of the Swiss Seismological Service at the ETH Zurich. “There is no single procedure to achieve this.”

Weimer led a group of engineers and experts in seismology, information technology, geology and social sciences from twenty organizations in 13 countries ranging from Japan and Italy to Israel and Mexico.

New Europe-wide map

Researchers have improved the EU's ability to estimate loss and damage from an earthquake – a so-called 'rapid impact assessment'.

The team relied on existing global services including ShakeMap, which collects data on ground shaking in areas hit by earthquakes.

Using new, more detailed data, the researchers created a European version of ShakeMap. The European Shakemap automatically receives any recorded data when an earthquake with a magnitude higher than 4 occurs.

At the same time, it collects relevant information such as the number of people living in the area, local soil conditions and the weakness of structures in the affected area.

“We can estimate the approximate number of casualties and injuries, and different levels of damage and costs, within just 30 minutes after the event,” said Wiemer, who is also head of the Department of Seismology in the Department of Geosciences at ETH Zurich.

This is not only useful for making urgent decisions in the aftermath of an earthquake, but can also improve knowledge of what would happen in a particular area if another earthquake occurred there.

This system is the first of its kind to be operated at the European level and is now also operating in Italy and Switzerland.

RISE has also developed methods – including through artificial intelligence – to predict powerful aftershocks. In the aftermath of an earthquake, hundreds or thousands of small tremors can overwhelm seismic networks.

“It's hard to process all that data, especially when you have to do it manually,” Wimmer said. “Using machine learning techniques, we can now process these events more quickly and with greater accuracy.”

Provided by Horizon: the European Union's journal of research and innovation

This article was originally published in the European Union research and innovation journal Horizon.

Citation: Deadly Earthquakes Lead to Search for Faster Alerts (2024, March 7) Retrieved March 7, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-03-deadly-earthquakes-trigger-speedier.html

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