Ahmedabad: Exactly 25 years ago, a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake jolted entire Gujarat and nearby areas, claiming thousands of lives and affected scores. What if cities like Ahmedabad and Surat get a warning about incoming earthquake surface waves (often identified as L-wave and R-wave), even though the warning comes a a few, but crucial, seconds earlier?“A timely alert can save hundreds of lives, especially if they are given warning to evacuate a building or take shelter. An early warning system (EWS) is in the works at the Institute of Seismological Research (ISR), based on a rich cache of data collected over the past two decades, and is likely to be completed in the next couple of years,” said Dr Sumer Chopra, former director general, ISR, in Gandhinagar, and currently professor at IIT Roorkee. “It is the second such system in the country, as one pilot system is being tested by a team from IIT Roorkee for Uttarakhand.”The ISR, founded in 2003, mapped Gujarat minutely over the past couple of decades, and currently has a denser network of sensors (211) compared to the rest of India combined (180). These sensors have recorded thousands of tremors in the state over the decades. Research also points to factors such as soil composition — about 44% of Gujarat’s area is comprised of quaternary sediments and another 12% with Rann sediments. Such soft soil can amplify waves generated by an earthquake. Researchers now have an estimate of the time the waves take to travel from the source to major locations, and their direction. “Thus, if an earthquake occurs in Kutch, depending on the nature of the event, it may take about 60-odd seconds for the damaging wavesto reach Ahmedabad. The EWS will be automated based on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML), as the sensors will help pinpoint the source, with the system calculating the approximate time the waves may hit major cities and critical establishments such as power plants,” said Dr Chopra. “No such readymade AI-based system is available for EWS, and we need to develop software and train the AI-ML-based system with earthquakes of the Gujarat region, and this takes time.“He said that a seismic hazard map for Gujarat was already created based on major faults, the geography of the region, and the history of major earthquakes. “The use of technology will help save lives and infrastructure,” he added.
