Rapid Earthquake Location for Earthquake Early Warning

Economic growth, industrialization and urbanization have made society more vulnerable than ever to seismic hazard in Korea. Although Korea has not experienced severe damage due to earthquakes during the last few decades, there is little doubt of the potential for large earthquakes in Korea as documented in the historical literature. As we see no immediate promise of short-term earthquake prediction with current science and technology, earthquake early warning systems attract more and more attention as a practical measure to mitigate damage from earthquakes. Earthquake early warning systems provide a few seconds to tens of seconds of warning time before the onset of strong ground shaking. To achieve rapid earthquake location, we propose to take full advantage of information from existing seismic networks; by using P wave arrival times at two nearest stations from the earthquake hypocenter and also information that P waves have not yet arrived at other stations. Ten earthquakes in the Korean peninsula and its vicinity are selected for the feasibility study. We observed that location results are not reliable when earthquakes occur outside of the seismic network. Earthquakes inside the seismic network, however, can be located very rapidly for the purpose of earthquake early warning. Seoul metropolitan area may secure seconds of warning time before any strong shaking starts for certain events. Carefully orchestrated actions during the given warning time should be able to reduce hazard and mitigate damages due to potentially disastrous earthquakes.