SY005-0009
Building Earthquake Early Warning across Central America
Monday, 7 December 2020
Poster
John F Clinton, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Swiss Seismological Service (SED), Zurich, Switzerland, Esteban J. Chaves, Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica, Universidad Nacional (OVSICORI-UNA), Heredia, Costa Rica, Lepolt Linkimer, Red Sismológica Nacional (RSN: UCR-ICE) y Escuela Centroamericana de Geología, Universidad de Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica, Griselda Marroquin, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, San Salvador, El Salvador, Frédérick Massin, SED, Swiss Seismological Service, Zurich, Switzerland, Marino Protti, Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica, Heredia, Costa Rica, Wilfried Strauch, OSOP Nicaragua, Managua, Nicaragua and Robin Yani, Instituto Nacional de Sismología, Vulcanología, Meteorología e Hidrología, Guatemala City, Guatemala
Abstract:
Central America suffers from frequent damaging earthquakes, from both on-shore shallow crustal sources, as well as tsunamigenic thrust events on the off-shore subduction zone. Rapid population growth and urbanisation means increasing numbers of persons are living in generally extremely vulnerably housing in cities, in direct proximity to these earthquake sources. The catastrophic potential of future seismic events has been demonstrated in recent decades, with casualties in the tens of thousands occurring in the 1972 Managua M6.2 and 1976 Guatemala M7.4 earthquakes. An effective Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system will not prevent these losses, but can mitigate some of the consequences of these damaging events.
A recent collaboration between national seismic monitoring agencies and the Swiss Seismological Service aims to build national EEW systems that provide public alerts across the region. This initiative builds on the long-existing regional cooperation in earthquake monitoring and data sharing. The project benefits from strong relationships with Civil Defense at the national and regional level, as well as the concurrent development and operation of CATAC, the regional Tsunami warning center. Currently, prototype EEW systems are implemented and are providing internal EEW alerts in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
This presentation describes the state of the project and key non-technical challenges. These include: setting up operational and governance structures with sufficient long-term funding; finding effective technologies to provide EEW alerts to the population, especially in a region as heterogeneous as Central America; selecting appropriate outreach messages for each nation; developing and implementing outreach programs. Efforts are on-going to collaborate with digital TV services to disseminate EEW alerts to the public, in a first phase via TV, with potential to massively upscale and provide alerts with minimum latency to the public.
