India joins 26 other countries to develop early earthquake warning system

NEW DELHI: India has joined hands with 26 other countries to develop a model for early earthquake warning system’. If this system is fully developed, an earthquake can be predicted at least a few seconds before it occurs.

India will also launch a satellite to visualize surface displacement relating to earthquake in 2019. The satellite will be equipped to send images of surface displacement up to the accuracy of few centimetres.

“Scientists, geophysicists and seismologists of 27 countries are working under India’s leadership on an ambitious project to develop early warning system for earthquakes to predict them a few seconds before they occur”, said Shailesh Nayak, secretary of the ministry of earth science.

A detailed discussion over the subject was held at a summit on ‘Combating Earthquake Disasters’ in Kolkata on Tuesday.

Referring to the outcome, Nayak said, “If this effort becomes successful and the model is developed, we would be able to reduce the number of human casualties substantially”.

He said some chemical changes under the earth’s surface and some physical displacements on the surface occur before earthquakes and we hope “if parameters are developed to observe, study and analyze these change, the quakes can be predicted”.

Nayak also said that many deep bore wells, filled with sensors and other equipments, will be put in place in all seismically active regions in the country to sense the chemical and physical changes under the earth’s surface in the coming years.

Twenty-two states in India are prone to earthquakes of various intensities like Severe, High, Moderate and Low. During last one decade, 11 earthquakes of magnitude five or above on Richter scale had shaken the country.