Earthquake Early Warning System Pioneered in Japan

Tomo Hiratsuka writes "After recent destructive earthquakes around the world, Japanese scientists have come up with an earthquake early-warning system that uses sensors and various technologies, including iPv6, to provide up to a minute's warning, which could make a lot of difference, especially in the event of a tsunami. Bizarrely, one of the warning methods even involves networked photocopiers, believe it or not."

Comments

Buzzword Bingo?

[lonb]

Using Ipv6? Um, why not also mention "using electricity" and "using gravity"?!? It'd be nice if there were less buzzword usage and more focus on the critical technologies in use.

People have short memories

[Heian-794]

The idea is simple -- it takes time for a tremor to propagate from its epicenter, but a sensor near the epicenter can transmit data virtually instantly. This short period can be enough for people to stop their cars, get under desks, etc., etc.

The article mentions how interest in this kind of thing has waned since the 1995 Kobe earthquake. I'd add that the average Japanese person knew little about the internet and its capabilities of delivering information at light-speed in 1995. (The average person then didn't even have a cell phone!)

With people's memories so short, look for interest in thsi technology explode after the next big earthquake. Hopefully that won't be the one that kills thousands and destroys people's homes.

Re:People have short memories

[Bazzalisk]

In 1995 the average person in japan may not have had a cell-phone - but I'm fairly sure that a substantial number of them did, remember that Japan was a very early adopter of this kind of technology.

Sadly, the article is more spam than content

[Thagg]

One of the authors spends a considerable amount of the article hyping his company "QuakeFinders", which is attempting to secure funding to build hundreds of sensors to blanket California. He says that this will cost tens of millions of dollars, which I'm sure he would see a significant percentage of personally.

The sensor that he descibes, though, sounds trivially simple to build. I could well believe that a system to hook these detectors into an actual warning system could be expensive, but building a bunch of detectors and deploying them around likely faults should be exteremly cheap indeed. Unfortunately, the "detectors" that have been built and deployed so far have yet to detect any earthquakes -- apparently because sufficiently large earthquakes have not been sufficiently close. Or maybe they just don't work, because the science is flawed.

Thad Beier