China Lacks Earthquake Early-Warning System

I read (in a Dutch quality news paper) that Tibetan farmers knew a natural disaster was about to happen seven days before the quake, because of a sudden, massive exodus of toads. The paper also claims warmings of several employees of the Chinese seismological bureau where ignored by authorities. So it seems like early warnings are possible? (be it, with some uncertainty)

We have developed an early earthquake warning and security device for private homes, schools, hospitals, small village warning, apartments, hotels, skyscrapers and industry market. This system can warn the people in the endangered regions on time before an earthquake comes and shut off all systems. The function ability was tested positively in extensive tests at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/pb2/index_e.html). 

The system already is in use in 10 different earthquake countries. In a school in San Salvador our system has given alarm 30 seconds before the S-wave reached the building. The EPI-centre was 140km away from the school.

We sold it to Honolulu, to Chile, Greece (City Hall), to Turkey (Consulate of Czech Republic in Istanbul, Hilton Hotel Istanbul), in Indonesia (Banda Ache), to Iran, to Afghanistan (Office of German Agro Action), to Pakistan (Hospital Kashmir), to Peru (private houses), to San Salvador (German school) and also in Germany.

Our system is an indispensable component of the modern building management in all vulnerable to seismic shock countries today. We can also connect our system in your building management system.

The product has won the idea price "W.I.N. AWARD 2006" as the best product innovation 2006 in Germany. 

We work with same international organizations.

Enclosed some information about company and product:

Our sensors record the harmless P wave. About electronics the wave is analyzed and evaluated in fractions of a second. If the swelling value (the intensity at the building) should be higher than the value demanded by the scientists, the system will give alarm. Different switching processes can be started over an energy management. In this way, for instance, it is possible to

give alarm before

shut off gas and electricity supplies

shut off the water supply

activate emergency power generators

park elevators

open safety doors and gates

traffic lights in front of bridges and tunnels

control railway signal installations

run data back-up programs

Overall, the energy management system is able to control up to a maximum of 8 different electronically operated energy systems and building installations.

The sensor can over a display with 8 differently swelling values (depend for the intensity of an earthquake where at the local place the system is installed) be adjusted according to the structure of the building.

For an additional safety the system can be executed redundantly against false alarms. It is dependent how many people I will warn (single house = 1 detector and for example a 30 apartments building = 2 - 3 detectors).  The sensors can be connected to a network with each other in a "Master/ Slave" up to 16 detectors relation. 

The basic module consist of the earthquake device and two sirens (as a single item 1,950 $US).

For more information see our WEB page and a German movie

http://www.secty-electronics.de/news.html

or the German Embassy in Washington:  http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/publications/week/2008/080125/economy7.html

Do you need more information? Please contact me.

I looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,

Juergen Przybylak

A great discussion of DAPR (Disaster Awareness, Preparedness, and Recovery) can be had in the last chapter of "I.T. Wars:  Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium."  The author exposes prevention measures in guarding against errors and large-scale man-made harm, such as terror attack, as well as exposing the best awarenesses, readiness postures and responses to natural (unpreventable) disasters.  He uses 9/11 and Katrina for his discussions.  Highly recommended.

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party, I just found this article from a link on Wikipedia. As one of the previous responders from Germany pointed out this article fails to mention that there are commercial solutions deployed in several countries.  The one I'm familiar with is the Quakeguard system from Seismic Warning Systems. This has a 10 year track record with a large number of installations in California.  The system has a sophisticated solution to avoid false positives which is important otherwise people will ignore the warning.