Rapid determination of earthquake magnitude using GPS for tsunami warning systems

Geoffrey Blewitt; Corné Kreemer; William C. Hammond; Hans Peter Plag; Seth Stein; Emile Okal

doi:10.1029/2006GL026145

Rapid determination of earthquake magnitude using GPS for tsunami warning systems

Geoffrey Blewitt^*, Corné Kreemer, William C. Hammond, Hans Peter Plag, Seth Stein, Emile Okal

^*Corresponding author for this work

Earth and Planetary Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

220 Scopus citations

Abstract

The 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake (M_w 9.2-9.3) generated the most deadly tsunami in history. Yet within the first hour, the true danger of a major oceanwide tsunami was not indicated by seismic magnitude estimates, which were far too low (M_w 8.0-8.5). This problem relates to the inherent saturation of early seismic-wave methods. Here we show that the earthquake's true size and tsunami potential can be determined using Global Positioning System (GPS) data up to only 15 min after earthquake initiation, by tracking the mean displacement of the Earth's surface associated with the arrival of seismic waves. Within minutes, displacements of >10 mm are detectable as far away as India, consistent with results using weeks of data after the event. These displacements imply M_w 9.0 ± 0.1, indicating a high tsunami potential. This suggests existing GPS infrastructure could be developed into an effective component of tsunami warning systems.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	L11309
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	33
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL026145
State	Published - Jun 16 2006

Funding

Due to an increasing age of many partly critical structures, like bridges for instance, Structural Health Monitoring gains more and more in importance and interest. In this contribution a possible application of Case-based Reasoning for the field of “Structural Health Monitoring” is introduced whereby similarity measurement and indexing is focused on. Research was done within a project called “safePipes” [8] funded by the European Union. Within this project a prototype for a Case-based Decision Support System was developed which should support the engineer in interpreting measurement data taken from different types of structures. Experiments with different kinds of test-data verified that Case-based Reasoning suits well to problems in this domain of Structural Health Monitoring and especially the (fully) automated interpretation of measurements from simple structures (e.g. pipes, ...) is a very promising research topic.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geophysics
General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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10.1029/2006GL026145

Cite this

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title = "Rapid determination of earthquake magnitude using GPS for tsunami warning systems",

abstract = "The 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake (Mw 9.2-9.3) generated the most deadly tsunami in history. Yet within the first hour, the true danger of a major oceanwide tsunami was not indicated by seismic magnitude estimates, which were far too low (Mw 8.0-8.5). This problem relates to the inherent saturation of early seismic-wave methods. Here we show that the earthquake's true size and tsunami potential can be determined using Global Positioning System (GPS) data up to only 15 min after earthquake initiation, by tracking the mean displacement of the Earth's surface associated with the arrival of seismic waves. Within minutes, displacements of >10 mm are detectable as far away as India, consistent with results using weeks of data after the event. These displacements imply Mw 9.0 ± 0.1, indicating a high tsunami potential. This suggests existing GPS infrastructure could be developed into an effective component of tsunami warning systems.",

author = "Geoffrey Blewitt and Corn{\'e} Kreemer and Hammond, {William C.} and Plag, {Hans Peter} and Seth Stein and Emile Okal",

note = "Funding Information: Due to an increasing age of many partly critical structures, like bridges for instance, Structural Health Monitoring gains more and more in importance and interest. In this contribution a possible application of Case-based Reasoning for the field of “Structural Health Monitoring” is introduced whereby similarity measurement and indexing is focused on. Research was done within a project called “safePipes” [8] funded by the European Union. Within this project a prototype for a Case-based Decision Support System was developed which should support the engineer in interpreting measurement data taken from different types of structures. Experiments with different kinds of test-data verified that Case-based Reasoning suits well to problems in this domain of Structural Health Monitoring and especially the (fully) automated interpretation of measurements from simple structures (e.g. pipes, ...) is a very promising research topic.",

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AU - Kreemer, Corné

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AU - Stein, Seth

AU - Okal, Emile

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N2 - The 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake (Mw 9.2-9.3) generated the most deadly tsunami in history. Yet within the first hour, the true danger of a major oceanwide tsunami was not indicated by seismic magnitude estimates, which were far too low (Mw 8.0-8.5). This problem relates to the inherent saturation of early seismic-wave methods. Here we show that the earthquake's true size and tsunami potential can be determined using Global Positioning System (GPS) data up to only 15 min after earthquake initiation, by tracking the mean displacement of the Earth's surface associated with the arrival of seismic waves. Within minutes, displacements of >10 mm are detectable as far away as India, consistent with results using weeks of data after the event. These displacements imply Mw 9.0 ± 0.1, indicating a high tsunami potential. This suggests existing GPS infrastructure could be developed into an effective component of tsunami warning systems.

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Rapid determination of earthquake magnitude using GPS for tsunami warning systems

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