Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay
L’Aquila earthquake in Italy, 2009.
New systems for effective earthquake response Earthquakes are among the most devastating of natural disasters, often causing fatalities and leading to enormous economic losses. Researchers in the TURNkey project are developing new systems to warn that an earthquake is imminent and help stakeholders respond effectively, as Ivan Van Bever and Johannes Schweitzer explain. An earthquake can have a devastating impact on the affected area, often causing fatalities, damaging infrastructure and leading to enormous economic losses. Researchers in the TURNkey project aim to help boost earthquake resilience by rapidly providing reliable information to key stakeholders. “In this we differentiate between two phases. The earthquake early warning phase is really about rapidly sending reliable information to all the different stakeholders, such as civil protection organisations, first responders and critical infrastructure providers. We aim to provide information to those stakeholders, who can then distribute information to citizens and the general public,” outlines Ivan van Bever, the TURNkey Project Manager. The second of the two phases is about enabling stakeholders to respond rapidly and effectively to an earthquake by identifying which areas have been particularly badly affected. The project consortium itself brings
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together 21 partners from across Europe with the goal of developing a cloud-based platform to help mitigate the impact of earthquakes, and Van Bever says the views of stakeholders are an important consideration in development. “Interviews have been conducted with stakeholders over the three years of the project, and they are being used for what is called a participatory action research cycle,” he outlines. This involves going back and forth to those stakeholders over several rounds of feedback to identify what functionalities would be of interest to them. “We’ve tested the platform against those same functionalities and features,” outlines Van Bever.
TURNkey project This platform is built on analysis of historical earthquakes, as well as data from several other sources, including information gathered from a number of sites across Europe with widely varying earthquake hazard levels.
There are records of earthquakes in Europe dating back 1,000s of years, while there are also more than 100 years of instrumental observations, representing a valuable source of information for Johannes Schweitzer, the TURNkey Project Coordinator. “We are using this information to evaluate earthquake risk,” he explains. “We can also analyse geodetic information to identify where there are movements in the earth’s crust, leading to a higher risk of earthquakes.” There are a number of other sources of data in the project, such as over 150 seismometers installed in six different locations across Europe to complement the existing seismic networks and provide additional coverage. The idea here is to cover areas with different earthquake hazard levels. “We have testbeds in Italy, Greece, Romania and the French Pyrenees, areas which are known to have a high risk of earthquakes. We also have a testbed in Iceland, which is a volcanic and seismically active area,” says Van Bever.
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