DisastersNASA to test new system of rapid earthquake analysis

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is prepared to begin testing this year a new system rapidly and accurately to measure the location and intensity of large earthquakes.

Based on GPS technology first developed and implemented at the University of Nevada in Reno, the Real-Time Earthquake Analysis for Disaster (READI) Mitigation Network will combine traditional seismic monitoring with GPS data streams.

READI was developed with the collaboration of researchers from University of California in San Diego, the University of Nevada in Reno, Central Washington University in Ellensburg, the University of California at Berkeley, UNAVCO in Colorado, and the California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The researchers used years of research and data from the Department of Defense, NASA, the United States Geological Survey, and the National Science Foundation to create the system. These agencies, according to Dailytech, along with federal and state partnership, are supporting the network.

READI is built on two distinct technologies. The first is the traditional network of seismic monitors already in place. The shortcoming ofthese devices isthat they measure only ground shaking, and have great difficulty in measuring the intensity of a temblor above magnitude seven.

GPS, on the other hand, provides a data stream on ground deformation and shifting, at a real-time accuracy level of centimeters, making it capable of classifying the magnitude of the temblor. When this deformation and shifting occurs on the sea bed during a high-intensity earthquake, the result can be a tsunami.

Researchers point to Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami as an example of READI’s capability. Authorities had estimated a magnitude 8 earthquake within 120 seconds.

Sci-tech-todayreports that “A magnitude 8 is a very large earthquake, but it’s not expected to produce nearly as large a tsunami as you did have,” according to Walter Szeliga, a geodesist and research professor at Central Washington University.

Combining seismic and GPS data, as READI does, would have identified Japan’s earthquake as a magnitude 9, about thirty times more powerful, and perfectly capable of producing the size and scope of the tsunami that struck the Japanese mainland.

A system like READI  could protect the western United States from similar disaster.

NASA will begin testing later this year with 500 stations scattered across California, Oregon, and Washington.