IIT Gandhinagar, CIT to develop earthquake warning system

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-GN) have undertaken a project to develop a 'slight early' earthquake warning system.

The institute has teamed up with California Institute of Technology (CIT), Pasadena, USA, to develop a system having dense network of low-cost motion sensors capable of sensing earthquake's early seismic activity.

"The goal of our project is to put in place a network of small devices called accelerometers near an active fault line which can pick up earth vibrations. They can be standalone devices transmitting data to a central server," Prof Girish Singhal, project incharge at IIT-GN said.

"A mesh of very low-cost sensors in that area shall be able to pick up velocity of shock waves, issuing slight early alerts of an earthquake," Singhal claimed.