Vrancea rapid early warning system (REWS) for Bucharest and industrial objectives — New technology for earthquakes monitoring

Abstract

Nowadays natural disasters phenomena as hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis or earthquakes, are still difficult to prevent. Based on signaling of the phenomenon imminent appearance in the destructive area, important limitations in human losses and material damages will be carried out. For that reason, WARNING turned into a key objective, both in theoretical and practical research.

For the earthquakes, warning intervals are nevertheless very short — seconds to maximum one minute (Mexico City case). Even if the time window is reduced, automated decision measures are possible to establish in case of an well organized system, mainly for: protection of dangerous chemical units and oil installations; shutdown valves of the natural gas pipelines to prevent fire hazard; protection of nuclear power plants and other high-risk nuclear objectives; electrical insulating of the power distribution network systems; alerting of emergency services, alerting of civil protection, and particularly of civil population; protection of railway transportation systems etc.

In Romania, the major seismic risk zone is located in Vrancea region. The earthquakes occurring in this area are the main sources of the seismic hazard on the Romania territory.

Seismotectonic characteristics of the Vrancea region offered the opportunity to create and develop a rapid seismic warning system. This system is simple, reasonably low-priced and robust and allows warning in an approximately 25 seconds time window for Bucharest. Warning signal obtained will be issued at the responsible factors and specific users in order to control automated blocking of the installations and to carry out the required protection actions.