India-led group of 27 to develop model for earthquake warning

A satellite expected to be launched by 2019

Scientists, geophysicists, and seismologists from 27 countries are working under India’s leadership to develop early warning system for earthquakes to predict them seconds before they occur.

Shailesh Nayak, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, at a summit on ‘Combating Earthquake Disasters’ in Kolkata said if the effort becomes successful, this could reduce the number of human casualties substantially.

 

He said, before earthquakes, some chemical changes under the earth’s surface and some physical displacements on the surface occur and hoped if parameters are developed to observe, study and analyse these changes, quakes could be predicted.

India is expected to launch a satellite by 2019 that will send images of surface displacement up to the accuracy of a few centimetres, said Nayak.

 

It may be noted, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) under the guidance of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is building a nano-satellite weighing less than 15 kg to study various issues, including understanding the effects of solar storms, lightning storms and earthquakes.

He added that in the coming years deep borewells filled with sensors and other equipment would be put in place in all seismically active regions in the country to sense the chemical and physical changes under the earth’s surface.

At present, 22 states in India are prone to earthquakes of various intensities like severe, high, moderate and low and urban explosion and densely populated cities with high-rise buildings make the quake scenario worse.

During the last one decade, 11 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or above on Richter scale occurred India.