Earthquake Genesis and Earthquake Early Warning Systems: Challenges and a Way Forward

Abstract

Abstract: Several natural hazards, including earthquakes, may trigger disasters and the presence of disaster drivers further lead to the massive loss of life and property, every year around the world. The earthquakes are unavoidable, as exact earthquake prediction in terms of date, and time is difficult. However, with the advancement in technology, earthquake early warning (EEW) has emerged as a life-saving guard in many earthquake-prone countries. Unlike other warning systems (where hours of warning are possible), only a few seconds of warning is possible in the EEW system, but this warning may be very helpful in saving human lives by taking the proper action. The concept of EEW relies on using the initial few seconds of information from nearby instruments, performing basic calculations, and issuing the warning to the farther areas. A dense network or enough network coverage is the backbone of an EEW system. Because of insufficient station coverage, the estimated earthquake location is error-prone, which in turn may cause problems for EEW in terms of estimating strong shaking for the affected areas. Seismic instrumentation for EEW has improved significantly in the last few years considering the station coverage, data quality, and related applications. Many countries including the USA, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have developed EEW systems and are issuing a warning to the public and authorities. Several other countries, namely China, Turkey, Italy, and India are in process of developing and testing the EEW system. This article discusses the challenges and future EEW systems developed around the world along with different parameters used for EEW. Article Highlights: This article aims to provide a comprehensive review related to the developmentThe explicit emphasis is on the scientific development of EEW parametersThe challenges and future scopes for the effective implementation of EEWS are discussed in terms of the correct location, the magnitude estimation, the region-specific use of ground motion prediction equations, communication technologies, and general public awareness © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.