ShakeAlert® earthquake warning: The challenge of transforming ground motion into protective actions

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Abstract

The USGS ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning (EEW) system is operational and providing public alerting in three West Coast states: California, Washington, and Oregon. Since 2006 the USGS has pursued a strategy of incrementally developing and rolling out EEW for increasingly larger areas and uses. As funding from federal and state budgets grew the system became more capable, detection methods were developed and improved, core network sensor stations were built or upgraded, and partners were enlisted to deliver alerts and implement protective actions. In the fall of 2018, the system became sufficiently functional to publicly declare it “open for business” in all three states for use by licensed partners to alert personnel in limited settings and take automated machine-to-machine actions. State-wide public alerting began in California in October of 2019, expanded to Oregon in March of 2021, and to Washington in May of 2021. Today millions of people can receive ShakeAlert-powered EEW through a variety of delivery methods and dozens of machine-to-machine protective systems are in place in transportation systems, utilities, fire stations, schools, hospitals, and public and private buildings. The ShakeAlert System implementation plan calls for a supporting network of 1,675 seismic stations. 1,129 (73%) have been completed and the rest should be done by 2025.

Study Area

Publication type Conference Paper
Publication Subtype Conference Paper
Title ShakeAlert® earthquake warning: The challenge of transforming ground motion into protective actions
Year Published 2021
Language English
Publisher California Department of Conservation
Contributing office(s) Earthquake Science Center
Description 7 p.
Larger Work Type Book
Larger Work Subtype Conference publication
Larger Work Title Proceedings of SMIP 2021 seminar on utilization of strong-motion data
First page 70
Last page 76
Country United States
State California, Oregon, Washington
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