PREVENT Earthquakes (UCLan)

Understanding Earthquakes: Science, Impacts, and Management

Panagiota Nikolaou

Start

Index

Management Technologies

Objectives

Mitigation

Introduction

Mitigation Strategies

Mechanics

Future Directions

Survey

Objectives

• Define earthquakes and seismic waves.
• Explain tectonic mechanics and causes of earthquakes.
• Evaluate technologies like sensors and UAVs in earthquake management.
• Discuss post-earthquake challenges and propose future strategies.

Learning Objectives

• Basics of earthquakes: Define, explain seismic waves, and analyse impacts.
• Earthquake mechanics: Role of tectonic plates and tectonic movements.
• Technologies used for prediction: Early warning systems, sensors, and machine learning.
• Mitigation strategies: UAVs in post-earthquake scenarios.
• Future directions: Propose innovative disaster management strategies.

01 Introduction to Earthquakes

Introduction to Earthquakes

• An earthquake occurs when the strain energy in the Earth’s crust is suddenly released, causing waves of shaking.
• Earthquakes are classified among the deadliest natural hazards which could cause terrible loss of human lives and economic cost.
• According to the National Earthquake Information Center 20000 earthquakes are recorded on average every year, from which around 100 earthquakes could cause serious damage and 16 are considered major earthquakes (in the magnitude 7 range and above on Richter scale).

• Approximately 60000 people die from natural disasters yearly, most caused by building collapses resulting from earthquakes.

Introduction to Earthquakes (cont.)

Introduction to Earthquakes (cont.)

Introduction to Earthquakes (cont.)

02 Mechanics of Earthquakes

Mechanics of Earthquakes

• The Earth's crust consists of seven large tectonic plates and several smaller ones.
• Beneath the crust lies the mantle, which behaves like a viscous fluid.
• Convection currents in the mantle, driven by heat from Earth’s core, cause these tectonic plates to move a few inches each year.
• At the boundaries where tectonic plates collide, immense friction builds up. When the pressure surpasses the frictional forces holding the plates together, a sudden release of stress occurs, resulting in an earthquake.
• An earthquake is the shaking of Earth’s surface within the lithosphere, caused by the sudden release of energy and movement of tectonic plates.
• This energy generates seismic waves that radiate outward.

Mechanics of Earthquakes (cont.)

• There are three types of tectonic plate movements that can cause earthquakes:
• Divergent: Plates move apart

Mechanics of Earthquakes (cont.)

• There are three types of tectonic plate movements that can cause earthquakes:
• Convergent: Plates collide

Mechanics of Earthquakes (cont.)

• There are three types of tectonic plate movements that can cause earthquakes:
• Transform: Plates slide past each other

Mechanics of Earthquakes (cont.)

• Causes of Earthquakes:
• Stress accumulation and release
• Fault lines and geological activity

Tectonic Plate Movements

03 Technologies for Earthquake Management

Technologies for Earthquake Detection

• Early Warning Systems:
• Developed to send alerts ahead of earthquake to reduce disaster impacts in many sectors of society.
• Involves the detection of an event when the earthquake has nucleated to provide detectable ground motion.
• The concept is based on the fact that S-waves and surface waves (i.e. more destructive types of seismic waves) propagate slower than P-waves (less destructive).
• Based on the gathered analysis, alerts are being communicated to the authorities seconds or minutes before the earthquake strikes to take necessary actions such as evacuating hazardous buildings.
• Conventional systems utilize traditional seismic instruments (i.e. high-quality seismometers).
• They have been developed in several earthquake-prone countries including Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy, and Taiwan.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems :
• Seismometers:
• Involves a ground-motion sensor used to measure ground displacement in XYZ directions and a recording system to graph the waveform corresponding to the seismic wave.
• The waveform provides critical properties such as amplitude and frequency range of seismic signals.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems :
• Seismometers:
• Such signals can be extremely dynamic with an amplitude range between 0,1nm and 10m while the frequency range is between 0.00002 Hz up to 1000 Hz.
• Very sensitive devices which implies that the recorded wave usually can also involve other natural environmental noises such as noise from wind, ocean waves, or other weather-related activities, or minor seismic activity, and anthropogenic noise from traffic, industrial operations.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems :
• Accelerometers:
• Measure the velocity of a single point on the ground and provide extra information about the intensity and forces subjected to the object from ground shaking

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems:
• Global Navigation Satellite System (GNNS):
• The most well-known examples are GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou.
• The satellites transmit microwave signals which are received by land-based antennas and receivers to obtain the position of the antenna.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems:
• Global Navigation Satellite System (GNNS)
• GNNS allows scientists to retrieve real-time positioning streams as continuous time series, and ultimately recover ground position, ground displacement, velocity, and static displacement.
• The advantage of GNSS solutions over traditional seismographs is that they do not saturate with magnitude and the direct extraction of displacement waveforms, the cover of out-of-network events and the characterization of faults and slip distributions.
• BUT, to provide useful information, earthquakes must be fairly strong with a magnitude greater than 7.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems:
• Global Navigation Satellite System (GNNS)
• GNNS allows scientists to retrieve real-time positioning streams as continuous time series, and ultimately recover ground position, ground displacement, velocity, and static displacement.
• The advantage of GNSS solutions over traditional seismographs is that they do not saturate with magnitude and the direct extraction of displacement waveforms, the cover of out-of-network events and the characterization of faults and slip distributions.
• BUT, to provide useful information, earthquakes must be fairly strong with a magnitude greater than 7.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Type of Sensors used for Early Warning Systems:
• Infrasound Technology:
• Earthquakes with magnitude greater than 5.5 mb (Body wave magnitude) can produce infrasound waves which can be detected and recorded using infrasound sensors.
• Sounds that fall below audible frequencies ranging from 0.003 to 20 Hz are defined as infrasound.
• Displacement of earth’s surface or raptures may be considered as a source of natural infrasound since is produced by the low frequency oscillation of the earth’s surface at the epicenter and the surrounding regions.

• Japan developed a network of 30 KUT infrasound sensors which are comprehensive sensors integrating an accelerometer, a barometer, and a microphone for detecting infrasound.
• Analysis of recorded earthquake infrasound waveforms can provide information with regards to the seismic magnitude and duration.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI):
• New developments in IoT and the ability of AI to explore hidden data patterns, demonstrate a promising potential for earthquake prediction.
• Rule-based methods, shallow machine learning, and deep learning algorithms have already been implemented in several studies to facilitate earthquake prediction. Earthquake prediction relies extensively on historical data.
• However, the implementation of precursor data (i.e. indirect and unconfirmed indicators such as radon gas concentration, and soil temperature variation) has also been implemented in AI models to facilitate earthquake prediction research.
• Since machine learning models require extensive data to be trained and improved, the extent to which these technologies will enhance prediction accuracy and improve earthquake models is limited to the availability of scarce historical earthquake data, since major earthquakes are not very frequent.

Technologies for Earthquake Management (cont.)

• Machine Learning Techniques for prediction:
• Algorithms that process the collected data from the sensors and use them to train different machine learning models in order to classify earthquake signals

04 Mitigation Strategies

Technologies for mitigate the effects of earthquakes

• The possibility of an aftershock necessitates maintaning a safe distance from the affected area, which makes human access difficult. Thus, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are among the most effective deep technologies that can be used to mitigate the effects of an earthquake.

Technologies for mitigate the effects of earthquakes (cont.)

• Modern UAV platforms, with sensing tools that can be mounded on these platforms, allow epxerts from emergency and rescue services to inspect, sense and manipulate objects from protected location at a safe distance from an actual incident or disaster area.
• A plethora of autonomous functionalities in UAV operations allow for more efficient and effective operations which minimize the overall response times.
• The main components of a UAV system are:
• the flight controller unit that controls the rotors based on the inputs of different sensors
• the remote controller that manually sends information to the flight controller unit in order to conduct manual movements based on the inputs of the user
• the absolute positioning system which is responsible to know accurately where the UAV is located to correct sensors deviations
• UAV ground control stations that are developed to automate the process of managing and monitoring the UAV operation and assist in fulfiling the goal of the mission by utilizing the potential of UAVs

Technologies for mitigate the effects of earthquakes (cont.)

• UAVs can provide several functionalities such as to collect and provide the information to assess the scale of a disaster, offers visual aids to first responders (e.g. provide information for safe or unsafe locations, search for missing persons, provide information about possible hazards, etc.).

• For example inspects the area running search and rescue of people’s lives under the wreckage after an earthquake, under the collapsed buildings.

• A search and rescue mission is initiated to inspect the area searching for injured civilians either by using a single UAV or a swarm of UAVs.

Search and Rescue Operation using UAVs

05 Future Directions

Future Directions

• Predictive technologies to provide more precise warnings

• Innovations in autonomous rescue operations

• Use of AI and include more training data for accurate predictions

06 Survey

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Discussion Activity (~90 minutes)

• https://create.kahoot.it/share/prevent-earthquakes/40f05041-aeac-42e8-bdcf-6ba7bb2d6516
• Topics for discussion:
• Main topic: How can advanced technologies further improve disaster management?
• AI and Machine Learning in Disaster Prediction and Response
• The Role of IoT in Disaster Management
• Smart Infrastructure and Disaster-Resilient Cities
• Satellite Technology and Remote Sensing for Disaster Monitoring
• Instructions:
• Brainstorm in groups and share ideas.
• Allocate 30 minutes for discussion.
• Prepare a short presentation of 5 minutes to present your ideas in the class (60 minutes).

Course completed!