Early Warning System for Earthquakes Based on Environmental Precursors

Overview

Objectives/Goals The main goal is to design, develop, implement and test a device which could provide an early warning system for Earthquakes. The purpose of this project will be to detect and measure four relevant earthquake precursors; Radon Gas, Ozone, small Magnetic Field fluctuations and Low-Intensity compression waves. Methods/Materials We obtained, magnetostrictive material (Metglas), piezoelectric plates, a UVB light source, a UVB sensor, darlington resistor, small piezoelectric plates, a pressure sensor and a temperature sensor. Each sensor was designed and built from off-the-shelf products. After designing and building each sensor, simulated data was acquired by each sensor separately. The Data was collected and calibrated using Vernier voltage, pressure and temperature probes and Logger Pro software. Each sensor was tested to it#s limit of detection. In every experiment we checked for stray electric and magnetic fields. Results From our results we were able to detect very small levels of Ozone in our UVB detector, from the magnetometer we were able to detect magnetic fields fluctuations as small as 1 nT at 1-#10 Hz at room temperature, from our Radon detector we can detect Gamma and Alpha radiation 1 meter from the detector. And from our low-intensity compression wave detector we are able to detect extremely small displacements. Conclusions/Discussion With off-the-shelf products we were able to design, develop and implement and test a device that senses some important precursors of an earthquake. Our data indicates that the device does detect relevant and important earthquake precursors with a highly reliable accuracy at all times. Usage of 4 sensors instead of one increase the prediction accuracy and ultimately the development and deployment of a sensor based early warning system. Suggested follow-up efforts include large scale deployment of the sensors and sensor networks in earthquake prone regions for field tests and ultimately the development of a sensor-based early warning system.

Competition history

• CSEF 2014 Electronics & Electromagnetics · Entry S0907

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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