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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."
Photocopier 1: Uh oh, paper appears to be jittering about in the scanning area.
Photocopier 2: Yeah, I noticed that too, but I thought it was the fatty going to the vending machine again!
Vending Machine: He's always pressing my buttons!
Photocopier 1: Do we think there'll be an earthquake?
Photocopier 3: Hmm, better warn people. Bum, some c*nts downloading pr0n again and the networks really slow.
Photocopier 2: I'll do it!
Oh, reading the article it works the other way around as a fast office-notification warning system. That's not nearly as interesting.
Bizarrely, one of the warning methods even involves networked photocopiers, believe it or not."
But is it a beowulf cluster?
You say you want a revolution....
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.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
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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.
Well obviously this can only mean that Godzilla has been using iPv6 and the Japanese gov't tapped into his communications.
I'm just impressed that the engineers thought to use what is always the office's most reliable appliance, the copying machine. Because if you need one device that's not going to break--why go anywhere else?
Disturb a few sensors, and half of Japan is sitting underneath their desks (-:
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Most of it is surprisingly simple -- the problem being that the physics of earthquake is not well understood yet. For instance, people often observed eerie lighs in the sky in the hours before a quake. Turns out that rock squeezed along a rift can free up eletrons, which means that huge currents flow accross the soil when the pressure is maximum -- right before a quake. It also seems to generate VLF noise (around 0.01 Hz). A simple pair of metal plates separated by an airgap can detect the chance of air conductivity, along with a VLF receptor, can thus form a good earthquake forecast station.
Of course, nobody really knows why these eletrical phenomenon occurs before a quake. But they still can be observed.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Is this based on the same technology they used for their Godzilla warning system? Cuz that doesn't seem to work too well...
It is relevant.
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is also being put to use. NTT East, the local telephone carrier in Tokyo, has developed an IPv6-based system (top) that uses multicasting technology to broadcast the data to cut down on internet delays.
Infuriate left and right
I for one welcome our new Japanese Earthquake Detecting Overlords!!! .... sounded better in my head.
It all worked so well until the day after the office Christmas party and the photocopy machines were churning out image after image of "cracks" and fissures in the Earth's surface.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
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
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Is this an Apple product?
The US Southern Calfornia Earthquake Center has had several versions in place (also) since the late 1980s. Oil company refineries, L.A. Metro Rail, and gas utility companies are among important customers.
Of course the early version had some snafus in the 1994 Northridge quake. At that time it was pager-based and pager buffer overflowed with lesser aftershocks. They fixed it up in time to successfully warn construction crews repairing freeway overpasses.
Mexico has been working on this equally long. They can experience magnitude eight quakes off its western shores. But by the time these seismic waves reach Mexico City several minutes later, they're peak energy is just that to resonate skyscapers which were built in the old Aztec lake bed. Early years there were a number of false alarms, but some successes too. As with Japan and the US, the current systems are more robust.
If you live on or near a fault, move.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
.. cell phones? japan? 1995?
..
.. and has been in steady iteration since the 80's ..
you bet your ass everyone could have a cell phone who wanted one
this whole concept of connected photocopiers was pioneered by the japanese, as a computing concept, in the 70's
(i'm a bit more interested in running torrent on the toaster, but thats just me..)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
There is a great benefit from a one minute warnign that is better than nothing. Imagine a surgeon about to make a precise cut. Suddenly everything starts to shake. Oops, there goes an artery and part of a spleen or something...
Also for rescue workers during aftershocks in order to make them get out before the ground starts shaking and the buildings colapse on them.
In this way a one minute warning is even better than a 1 day warning like "in the next 24 hours there will be an earthquake so let us all go outside just to avoid building colapsing and stop all cirurgies in order to avoid bigger damage"