New
Delhi: In a first
of its kind project, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee will
install ‘early earthquake warning’ systems across major cities in north India.
The project, which is a part of the
overall research being conducted by the institute in the field of Earthquake
Engineering, is an extension of the existing pilot project being conducted in
the Himalayan region. The location of the institute acts as an added advantage
when it comes to working on seismology.
When the pilot project started in
2015, IIT Roorkee became the first institute to set up 84 sensors in the
seismic gap region of Garhwal Himalaya with the help of the Ministry of Earth
Sciences. These on-site sensors stream data in real-time to a computer server
at the institute, using the networks of BSNL and SWAN ( network of Uttarakhand
government).
“The data is being processed for
issuing a warning for magnitude six and above earthquakes. Sirens, connected to
the server, have been fitted within the campus of IIT Roorkee to warn of an
impending high-magnitude earthquake in the region. This project was
successfully completed in March 2017,” said an official of IIT Roorkee.
The Uttarakhand government
sanctioned a project to IIT Roorkee to maintain the early earthquake warning
systems, and install 100 additional sensors covering Kumaun region, besides
installing sirens in State Emergency Operation Centres (SEOC) at Dehradun and
all district headquarters of Uttarakhand, and another 100 sirens in Dehradun
and Haldwani.
Source:DNA-12th September,2017
