Haryana minister inaugurates earthquake warning system

Gurgaon, July 18: Haryana's Finance Minister Abhimanyu Singh on Monday inaugurated an early earthquake warning system that has been installed in a building here and can raise an alarm 30 seconds in advance of actual tremors.

Developed by German firm Secty Electronics, the Early Earthquake Warning and Security System has been set up at the Haryana Institute of Public Administration (HIPA) here.

Abhimanyu Singh saw a live demonstration of the technology. He said Haryana has taken a lead over other states in testing and adopting the technology that will help it mitigate the effects of disasters.

Present on the occasion were Juegan Przybylak, Managing Director of Secty Electronics GmbH, and Bijender Goel, Managing Director of Terra Techcom Pvt Ltd, an Indian firm that has brought the technology to India.

Secty Electronics developed the early earthquake warning and security system in collaboration with GFZ-Postdam (German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam).

The technology has been installed on the foundation pillars of a building. It is capable of detecting the intensity of an earthquake and differentiating between primary waves and secondary waves.

It issues alerts as soon as primary waves strike an area so that people get some time before secondary waves hit the area.

The system has eight threshold values which give signals and are programmed to raise public alarm and shut off gas, water and power supply in the event of a severe earthquake.

The system has the capability of calculating the intensity of an earthquake.

It gets activated automatically at the intensity of five on the Richter scale, before destructive secondary waves hit an area and can issue a warning 30 seconds ahead of an earthquake.

Haryana falls in seismic zones IV, III and II and is vulnerable to earthquakes.

IANS