Project objectives

The quality of life and infrastructure security are vulnerable more and more to natural disasters caused by geologic (earthquakes, volcanoes etc.), atmospheric, hydrologic or technologic events. In Romania and abroad, earthquakes are causing 15 % of the total number of these events. Also the earthquake are responsible for approximatively 30% of the total damage generated by natural and anthropogenic events. There is a big vulnerability of buildings from Bucharest and other cities, that was observed during the last catastrophic events from 1940 November 10 (Mw =7.4) and 1977 March 4 (Mw=7.2). During the 1977 earthquake were recorded 1578 deaths, 11300 injured people and 35000 houses destroyed. 480 people died from burns caused by gas fires, since after the earthquake the gas was still pumped in the gas pipes of towns. Providing warning notification several seconds before dangerous earthquake waves arrive at a target site mitigate the property damages and human casualties. The scope of SEER project(Standalone earthquake alert receiver able to generate „on-site” notifications)is to create a low-cost, robust and versatile tool for end-users with direct implication in society and critical infrastructure management and the quality of life during hazardous phenomena. The scope will be achieved following two specific objectives (A) To improve the EEWS performance and (B) To test the performance of the device capabilities with historical and real time data. The main result of the project is a device able to receive alerts notifications from the regional EEWS operated by NIEP and also to issue alerts using the “on-site” approach. This receiver device will be a modular one and will be easily adaptable to future client needs.