Stand-alone tsunami alarm equipment

Stand-alone tsunami alarm equipment

One of the quickest means of tsunami evacuation is transfer to higher ground soon after strong and long ground shaking. Ground shaking itself is a good initiator of the evacuation from disastrous tsunami. Longer period seismic waves are considered to be more correlated with the earthquake magnitude....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Natural hazards and earth system sciences Vol. 17; no. 5; pp. 685 - 692
Main Authors: Katsumata, Akio, Hayashi, Yutaka, Miyaoka, Kazuki, Tsushima, Hiroaki, Baba, Toshitaka, A. Catalán, Patricio, Zelaya, Cecilia, Riquelme Vasquez, Felipe, Sanchez-Olavarria, Rodrigo, Barrientos, Sergio
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 15-05-2017
Copernicus Publications
Subjects:
Accelerometers
Alarm systems
Casualties
Civilian evacuation
Correlation
Cut-off
Data processing
Displacement
Earthquakes
Environmental aspects
Equipment and supplies
Evacuation
Evacuation systems
Failure
Ground motion
Information sources
Mass media
Methods
Microelectromechanical systems
Noise
P-waves
Risk
Seismic activity
Seismic waves
Sensitivity
Sensors
Shaking
Tsunami hazard
Tsunamis
Weather hazards
Japan
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Summary:One of the quickest means of tsunami evacuation is transfer to higher ground soon after strong and long ground shaking. Ground shaking itself is a good initiator of the evacuation from disastrous tsunami. Longer period seismic waves are considered to be more correlated with the earthquake magnitude. We investigated the possible application of this to tsunami hazard alarm using single-site ground motion observation. Information from the mass media is sometimes unavailable due to power failure soon after a large earthquake. Even when an official alarm is available, multiple information sources of tsunami alert would help people become aware of the coming risk of a tsunami. Thus, a device that indicates risk of a tsunami without requiring other data would be helpful to those who should evacuate. Since the sensitivity of a low-cost MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) accelerometer is sufficient for this purpose, tsunami alarm equipment for home use may be easily realized. Amplitude of long-period (20 s cutoff) displacement was proposed as the threshold for the alarm based on empirical relationships among magnitude, tsunami height, hypocentral distance, and peak ground displacement of seismic waves. Application of this method to recent major earthquakes indicated that such equipment could effectively alert people to the possibility of tsunami.
ISSN:1684-9981
1561-8633
1684-9981
DOI:10.5194/nhess-17-685-2017