es from San Francisco, by which a wave of the earth high enough to do damage will start an electric current over the wires now radiating from this city and almost instantaneously ring an alarm bell, which should be hung in a high tower near the center of the city (Cooper, 1868).
Making theory into reality has resulted in several approaches to earthquake sensing and reporting. In general terms an earthquake sensing network would consist of a distributed network of remote seismic stations that measure weak and strong earth motion and transmit the data in real time to a central facility. This facility processes the data and issues warning broadcasts in the form of information packets containing estimates of earthquake location, zerotime (time the earthquake began), magnitude, and reliability of the predictions (Real-time earthquake monitoring, 1991).
Users of the warning broadcasts would have a dedicated receiver that monitors the warning broadcast frequency. The user also has preprogrammed responses that are automatically executed when the warning information packets contain location and magnitude estimates above a facility's tolerance.
The alert signal broadcast is an area-wide transmission and is probably sent via FM radio or television subcarrier communications. Ensuring the survivability of the EAS is addressed with several strategies: hardening the remote
stations for strong motion; using redundant widely separated
central stations, communications, and warning broadcast transmitters; and noting that strong motion is emergent (i.e., it builds up over a period of several seconds), allowing some period of time in the early evolution of the earthquake, as accelerations build to damaging levels, during which a vulnerable system continues to function (Real-time earthquake monitoring, 1991).
An example of a simple EAS was proposed by Esayan for shutting down Soviet Union nuclear power plants located in areas ...