Key technologies of earthquake early warning system for China’s high-speed railway

Purpose–The purpose of this study is to introduce the top-level design ideas and the overall architecture of earthquake early-warning system for high speed railways in China,which is based on P-wave earthquake early-warning and multiple ways of rapid treatment.Design/methodology/approach–The paper describes the key technologies that are involved in the development of the system,such as P-wave identification and earthquake early-warning,multi-source seismic information fusion and earthquake emergency treatment technologies.The paper also presents the test results of the system,which show that it has complete functions and its major performance indicators meet the design requirements.Findings–The study demonstrates that the high speed railways earthquake early-warning system serves as an important technical tool for high speed railways to cope with the threat of earthquake to the operation safety.The key technical indicators of the system have excellent performance:The first report time of the P-wave is less than three seconds.From the first arrival of P-wave to the beginning of train braking,the total delay of onboard emergency treatment is 3.63 seconds under 95%probability.The average total delay for power failures triggered by substations is 3.3 seconds.Originality/value–The paper provides a valuable reference for the research and development of earthquake early-warning system for high speed railways in other countries and regions.It also contributes to the earthquake prevention and disaster reduction efforts.

AEIC: Present and Future Program

The establishment of the ASEAN Earthquake Information Center (AEIC) was endorsed by the 40th Meeting of the Committee on Science and Technology held in October 2000, at the request of the ASEAN Sub-Committee on Meteorology and Geophysics (SCMG) to obtain the ASEAN Standing Committee’s (ASC) approval to officially use the name “ASEAN Earthquake Information Center (AEIC)”. As part of AEIC activities, the SCMG implemented a project on the ASEAN Seismic Network for Rapid Exchange of Strong Earthquake Data (ASNET RESED). The project was implemented by the ASCMG with funding support from the Government of Japan through the Japan ASEAN Co-operation Promotion Program (JACPP). The aim of the project is to facilitate the rapid exchange of data and information on earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 5.5 on the Richter scale, and to link all of the ASEAN National Seismological Centers through the Internet to disseminate earthquake information. For the future program, we propose a seismic data exchange between the National Seismological Centers in ASEAN countries as well as world seismological centers using the facilities in the AEIC. The plan is basically to develop and update the software and hardware in the NSC and AEIC for data communication. To refresh our knowledge in seismology and data communication, we arrange the training sessions for both topics.