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On May 4, 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey, the 91探花-based and the Washington Emergency Management Division activated a system called ShakeAlert that sends earthquake early warnings throughout Washington state directly to people’s cell phones.

PNSN operates a growing network of about 230 seismic stations in Washington and some 155 stations in Oregon that provide data for ShakeAlert. When four or more of these instruments detect unusual shaking, that motion is analyzed by computers on the 91探花campus that quickly calculate the size and location of the seismic event.

The 91探花is part of a consortium of universities that developed the earthquake early warning system in partnership with the USGS. Seismologists are continuing to build out and improve the system, even as public alerting has been activated.

Read full story:听/news/2021/05/03/earthquake-early-warnings-launch-in-washington-completing-west-coast-wide-shakealert-system/

For more information, contact Kiyomi Taguchi at ktaguchi@uw.edu or 206-685-2716.

When the Big One hits, the first thing Washington residents notice may not be the ground shaking, but their phone issuing a warning. The U.S. Geological Survey, the 91探花-based and the Washington Emergency Management Division on Tuesday, May 4, will activate the system that sends earthquake early warnings throughout Washington state. This completes the tri-state rollout of , an automated system that gives people living in Washington, Oregon and California advance warning of incoming earthquakes.

鈥淔or the first time, advance warning of imminent earthquake shaking will be a reality in our region. Even just seconds, up to a minute of warning is enough to prepare yourself and take cover 鈥斕齛ctions that may spare you from injury or even save your life,鈥� said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the PNSN, which operates the seismic monitoring in Washington and Oregon.

Once the system goes live on May 4, the first signs of an earthquake above a magnitude 4.5 or 5, about when the shaking becomes noticeable indoors, will trigger an alert and a reminder to drop, cover and hold on. Warning times range from a few seconds to tens of seconds depending on your distance to the epicenter. The launch will be silent 鈥� there will be no test on May 4.

The PNSN operates a growing network of about 230 seismic stations in Washington and some 155 stations in Oregon that provide data for ShakeAlert. When four or more of these instruments detect unusual shaking, that motion is analyzed by computers, some of them on the 91探花campus, that quickly calculate the size and location of the event.

People connected to the Wireless Emergency Alert system (the same system that produces AMBER alerts), will now get earthquake alerts for events of magnitude 5 or greater, using a similar interface. Alerts for events of magnitude 4.5 or above will be integrated into Android devices, where screens will also show the earthquake鈥檚 approximate magnitude and location. When people get an alert, they should use the brief warning to seek immediate protection, following this . No downloads are required 鈥� find out .

The ShakeAlert system, similar to existing early warning systems in Mexico and Japan, began sending alerts in California in 2019 and in Oregon in March 2021. With the addition of Washington state, the system will now issue warnings to millions more people at risk from the largest possible earthquake in the lower 48 states 鈥� a rupture of the offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 700-mile fault that runs from California鈥檚 Cape Mendocino to the tip of Canada鈥檚 Vancouver Island (discovered in part through 91探花research). The alerts will also warn of potentially damaging earthquakes that are more likely to occur sooner, on one of crustal faults in the Puget Sound region alone, or deeper slips on the underlying ocean plate. The system works by detecting the first signs of an earthquake before the slower-moving but more damaging ground-shaking waves arrive.

The PNSN began testing the ShakeAlert system with select Washington and Oregon businesses, utilities and organizations in 2015. Besides the individual alerts on phones, the system will be available for organizations or businesses to incorporate into their emergency plans 鈥� for instance, to close water valves, slow trains to prevent derailment, halt surgeries or pause sensitive equipment before the shaking starts.

鈥淏usiness in the pilot program have used these alerts to close valves for water and natural gas, stop rotating equipment and alert employees. We have also partnered with Stanwood Elementary School, which has connected the system to its PA system so students can do earthquake drills that use ShakeAlert,鈥� said PNSN communications manager Bill Steele, who has coordinated the regional test users.

Scientists at the PNSN are continuing to improve the system. About 65% of the planned seismic stations in the network are complete in Washington state. PNSN field teams will install more seismometers through late 2025 in places like the Olympic Peninsula and Eastern Washington.

鈥淭he network is successfully detecting earthquakes now, but that doesn鈥檛 mean we can鈥檛 make it even better. We鈥檙e continuing to install seismometers and improve algorithms to make the alerts faster and more reliable, to give people more warning time and lower the chance of any missed events or false alarms,鈥� Tobin said.

Initial development of the earthquake alert system by three West Coast universities, including the UW, began a decade ago and was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The buildout of the system was funded by Congress, with major grants administered by the USGS in 2015 and 2019, and completed by federal and state agencies working with a consortium of four West Coast universities: the UW; the University of Oregon; the University of California, Berkeley; and the California Institute of Technology.

The Washington system also got state funding in the 2020-21 budget. Private support for Washington鈥檚 system has also come from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Amazon, Puget Sound Energy and individual donors.

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu, Steele at wsteele@uw.edu and 206-601-5978, or PNSN ShakeAlert user engagement lead Gabriel Lotto at glotto@uw.edu.

See also a USGS and a Washington Emergency Management Division .

The system was developed through a partnership between the 91探花 and other West Coast universities and the U.S. Geological Survey working with state emergency managers. The system uses ground sensors across the region to detect the first signals from a rupturing earthquake and then sends that information to computers and phones, providing seconds to tens of seconds of warning of an imminent earthquake.

91探花News sat down with Harold Tobin, professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the , to learn more.

How does it feel to be on the cusp of launching the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system in Oregon and Washington?

The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system has been a big and technically complicated thing to put together, so it has taken many years. It is really exciting and satisfying to see that all that effort and work by many people is coming to fruition. It鈥檚 a collaboration between the USGS, us at the PNSN at 91探花an also our counterparts at University of Oregon, Berkeley and Caltech.

The rollout for us has been somewhat incremental, in the sense that the system is functioning well now even as we work to improve our seismic network. We鈥檙e detecting earthquakes, and alerts are being delivered to technical partners including emergency managers, utilities and schools.

But the stage of broadcasting mass alerts is really a new step, and one that brings to fruition the dream of earthquake early warning. We鈥檙e really excited about bringing this directly to the public, and taking the capability we鈥檝e developed and actually putting it to use to increase public safety.

You鈥檙e director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which includes both Oregon and Washington. Why are the two states鈥� ShakeAlert systems launching at different times (and why is Washington last)?

California had the most developed network of seismometers, it has the most frequent earthquakes and the largest earthquake hazard, since it has a lot of population right along the San Andreas fault. So it made a lot of sense for California to roll it out first in late 2019.

Ultimately, ShakeAlert is one unified system for the whole West Coast. This is a collaboration between the ShakeAlert partners and state emergency management. Oregon chose the anniversary of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami for its launch date. Washington鈥檚 Emergency Management Division is launching in May in order to have enough time to test the Wireless Emergency Alert system and prepare the public by educating people on what the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning system is, how to receive alerts, and how to protect themselves when they receive an alert: drop, cover, and hold on.

How can people in听King, Pierce and Thurston counties sign up for the test taking place in late February? And how can Washingtonians sign up for the actual earthquake early warning system when it goes live in May?

Washington EMD and USGS have developed a simulated earthquake warning test message they will broadcast Feb. 25 on the Wireless Emergency Alert system, the nation鈥檚 universal alerting system. The test will evaluate how the WEA system performs for earthquake early warning in the Puget Sound area.

You have to , which is for users in Pierce, King and Thurston counties. Once ShakeAlert goes live in May, earthquake alerts will go to anyone in Washington who has WEA alerts enabled on their device.

There will also be another way that earthquake alerts will be delivered. If you have an Android phone device, Google has embedded it in the mobile operating system in late 2020. So those devices in California are getting alerts now, and we expect Android alerts will go live in Washington in May. We hope other phone operating systems will follow suit.

Washington ShakeAlert is a collaboration between the USGS, Washington Emergency Management and the PNSN. Can you explain how the three groups collaborate?

ShakeAlert is operated by the USGS in partnership with the PNSN and California seismic networks. The data that is generated to detect the earthquakes in Washington and Oregon comes from the PNSN, the seismic network operated out of the 91探花and the University of Oregon. We are direct partners in the research and development of this system. At the UW, we operate one of three computer systems that ingest the data and issue the alert messages; the others are at UC Berkeley and Caltech. There鈥檚 a strong partnership between the PNSN and the USGS on earthquake detection and the continuing development of the system that issues the warnings. Washington Emergency Management is responsible for public safety, and so they are determining the types of public alerts that will be released, the messaging, public education and appropriate responses.

This is a great example of a partnership among all those entities. We are all working toward this same goal, of increasing earthquake awareness and public safety.

The PNSN began testing the system back in 2015 with early adopters. What have you learned from that experience?

A system like this is complicated, and will reach everyone, so we have to test it really extensively. We鈥檙e decreasing the number of false or missed alerts in our beta system. Just seeing more and more events has allowed us to improve the algorithms, to distinguish between a false alarm and a real signal, and to better pinpoint the magnitude and location of the earthquake. A typical time frame is now 2 seconds for our computers to decide on the location and magnitude of the earthquake and to generate the alert 鈥� the pace that that happens is unbelievable.

Now that the system is about to go public, how will other businesses, schools, organizations or agencies be able to incorporate these alerts into their emergency plans?

The USGS licenses partners to develop products that take the ShakeAlert message and can connect to other systems. A number of those licensed offer systems that can be adopted, such as a box that can be hooked up to a school PA system and automatically issue a prerecorded message that alerts students to drop, cover and hold on. Any business that has staff in a facility can think about how they can incorporate earthquake early warnings into their own facility. ShakeAlert messages can also trigger automated actions to pause manufacturing processes, move elevators to the next floor and open the doors, close valves on reservoirs, and initiate other loss-reduction actions.

What should someone do when they get their first 鈥渞eal鈥� alert?

When someone gets an alert, the appropriate action to take is to drop, cover and hold on. It鈥檚 important to get under a protective cover. Most injuries from earthquakes in the U.S. are not from the catastrophic collapse of a building but from falling objects 鈥� lights, ceiling tiles, etc.

If you鈥檙e driving in a car, the appropriate action would be to pull over and stop the car, if possible. If you鈥檙e in a building, stay in a building. The message is really to brace yourself 鈥� drop, cover and hold on. That message, to pause and protect yourself, is key. (Washington Emergency Management has more tips .)

What about British Columbia? Will the earthquake early warning system extend across the border?

Natural Resources Canada is working in parallel to develop an earthquake early warning system. We already use data from seismometers in Canada, and we incorporate that information in our alerts 鈥� earthquake waves don鈥檛 stop at the border.

Can we expect any improvements or changes coming down the line?

Yes, we鈥檙e improving the system all the time. We are going live with public testing of this system because we know that it fundamentally works, but we鈥檙e also continuously improving the system. We have hundreds of seismic stations in place but we鈥檙e adding dozens more, so that we can optimize the network to detect earthquakes wherever they occur within the region.

We鈥檙e also continuously improving the computer algorithms that detect the raw data and decide where and how big the earthquake is. Once it goes live, there will be no pause in improving the system. We would also love to add more offshore detection systems, since offshore quakes are a challenge to detect accurately.

For me, this is an exciting example of science to action, of things that are driven by fundamental science and research in seismology that show the way to something that can do some tangible good for society 鈥� to increase public safety. It鈥檚 exciting to see that happening with the ShakeAlert system.

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu or Bill Steele, communications director at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, at wsteele@uw.edu and 206-685-5880.

The PNSN is responsible for monitoring earthquakes and volcanoes in Washington and Oregon. It is a partnership between the 91探花, the University of Oregon and the USGS. The support for the PNSN is among the new announced today by the USGS.

The first year’s funding of $5.4 million to the PNSN begins this month. The 91探花will receive about $3.75 million in direct support of its PNSN activities and $1.66 million will support the PNSN team at the University of Oregon. The second-year funding, of an additional $5 million, is contingent on approval by Congress and will be similarly shared.

“This investment in the PNSN represents a major increase in federal support for earthquake monitoring in the Cascadia region,” said , director of the PNSN and professor in the UW’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences. “At the end of the two years of funding we anticipate having essentially doubled the number of seismic stations across our whole region that contribute to real-time earthquake early warning. This would allow for full public alerts of any potentially damaging earthquakes, across our entire region of Washington and Oregon, by the end of the two-year period.”

This new award will allow for installation of 104 new seismic stations in Washington state and 44 in Oregon, during the two-year period. It will also support improved, more-sophisticated detection of earthquakes as they begin, and new efforts to engage potential users of the warnings.

ShakeAlert’s network of instruments detect the first, less damaging waves from a major earthquake close to where the earthquake begins. The system then issues alerts for the estimated size and location of the earthquake, providing seconds or minutes of warning before the more damaging ground shaking begins 鈥� enough for someone to pull off the road, stop a surgery, or find a safe place to take shelter.

In the Pacific Northwest’s pilot phase of the system, early adopters in the region have developed pilot projects with guidance and support from the PNSN and USGS, and have received ShakeAlert warning messages for the past two years. These warnings are currently used to trigger loss-reduction measures at critical facilities 鈥� such as turning off water valves in public utility districts 鈥� before dangerous shaking would arrive.

The additional funding will support the development of new pilot projects in schools, businesses, communities and critical infrastructure facilities in preparation for the eventual goal of open alerts to the general public, as in the Los Angeles region. The improvements to PNSN’s network supported by this funding will meet the USGS’ recommended station-density standard for public alerting in almost all areas of Washington and Oregon.

鈥淚t will enable us to rapidly build out our network to produce faster and more accurate alerts for Cascadia Region earthquakes,鈥� Tobin said.

The funding will also support ongoing research to integrate GPS data into ShakeAlert, which will allow quicker estimates of the magnitude of offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquakes as they unfold. The 91探花is sharing its research in this area with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA in the hope of improving tsunami-warning capabilities. The 91探花is working with Central Washington University, also supported by USGS, to receive near-real-time GPS data from across Washington and Oregon that will be integrated into future releases of ShakeAlert.

The regional ShakeAlert effort began in 2011, when the 91探花joined the University of California, Berkeley and California Institute of Technology as a primary ShakeAlert center in the developing a West Coast warning system. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded $2 million to each university to kick-start ShakeAlert from a research project to an operational system. With support from Congress, the USGS ramped up support for ShakeAlert as the foundation’s seed funding expired.

Additional support for PNSN operations comes from the U.S. Department of Energy and the states Oregon and Washington. The Washington legislature, in its current biennium budget, allocated $1.24 million over two years for additional enhancements to the ShakeAlert network.

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu or 206-543-6790 and PNSN communications director Bill Steele at wsteele@uw.edu or 206-685-5880. Note: Tobin is available by phone Aug. 19 and will be back in Seattle Aug. 20.

91探花News sat down with Tobin to learn a bit more about his research, experience and plans for the UW-based , a coalition among the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Oregon and the 91探花that monitors seismic activity from earthquakes and volcanoes in this region.

What drew you to the UW?

HT: To be honest, it was an easy decision. I know the area well. I lived in Oregon for two years when I was in my early 20s, but I’ve been here tons since. I went to graduate school in Santa Cruz, and before then, as an undergraduate at Yale, I did fieldwork for two summers high up in the Olympic Mountains. And before that I had spent a summer volunteering at Mount St. Helens. That got me interested in this region and in plate tectonics. I’ve just moved to this region after being a professor in New Mexico and Wisconsin, but coming to the Pacific Northwest I’m just tremendously excited to be here and I feel like I’m coming back to my research home.

The challenge of directing the PNSN and taking it to the next level is really exciting. The PNSN already is this fantastic organization that’s top notch in terms of being part of the nation’s data collection system and frontline information system for major natural hazards. The group of people here at PNSN is so talented and dedicated. The scope of expertise required to run 300-plus instruments, of all different flavors, vintages and types, running around the clock with all the data streaming in real time, is enormous. The communications networking system has to be a 24/7, fail-safe operation, and it is. It’s a privilege to be able to come into an organization that’s already functioning at a really high level.

The PNSN has also already established itself as this fantastic link between the scientific measurements and the community at large. The PNSN has to be more than the seismic network; it’s got to be the go-to place for geologic hazards, and understanding how living on top of a subduction zone matters to people in the Puget Sound region, the state of Washington and the whole Pacific Northwest. I’d love to see the PNSN’s reach continue to expand on the public outreach side, and build the research program at the university, too.

What are some current or upcoming projects at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network?

HT: This is a really exciting time for the PNSN. First of all, the stuff that’s already going on: The advent of the and earthquake early warning is happening; some parts are already operational, and much more is coming soon. When our sensors detect an earthquake鈥檚 “P-wave,” the first, fast-moving but relatively undamaging wave, it gives you some tens of seconds of warning before the slower moving “S-waves” that really do the damage. Developing a system with the U.S. Geological Survey and university partners that’s capable of detecting earthquakes as they start and alerting civil authorities and the public is ambitious but achievable, and I want to make sure that goal is fully realized.

In terms of new initiatives, the scientific community realizes that if we want to fully understand how the earthquake processes work in the Pacific Northwest, from offshore right up to the mountains and even to the east side, we need even more types of measurements and instrumentation.

We think of the seismic information, which is how the Earth shakes. But the Earth is actually in motion over a much wider range of timescales. Geodesy is the study of how the Earth moves slowly, and seismology is how the Earth moves fast. Really it’s just one big spectrum. We will push to comprehensively measure all these types of motion and unrest.

The next big thing is figuring out how to make more measurements offshore. The shoreline is no boundary, from the Earth’s point of view, for plate tectonics or for the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is our biggest hazard. Most of the stress buildup leading to the inevitable earthquake is happening offshore, beneath the bed of the Pacific Ocean. We need to be able to monitor that much better than we do now. It’s also a huge challenge because any detector on the seafloor is 10 to 100 times more expensive than on land. But there are new technologies that are emerging to monitor seafloor motion better. Incorporating those into the network is a major long-term goal.

When might ShakeAlert go public 鈥� as in, when will our phones warn us that an earthquake is imminent?

HT: ShakeAlert is here now, really. We have the capability in place now to alert the operators of critical infrastructure like utilities when an earthquake large enough to cause damage has occurred and to expect imminent shaking. That will allow them to take specific actions to protect the public during those critical seconds. In 2018 ShakeAlert has transitioned from research and development to actually using the system to take risk-reduction actions, and pilot programs are expanding. For example, we’re working with the superintendent of public instruction and have identified a number of school districts in areas where the sensor networks are already up to the task that have indicated they would like to develop pilot projects for schools.

There is a big push across all the West Coast states for congressional funding, mostly flowing through the U.S. Geological Survey, for the buildout of the ShakeAlert network. That funding will ensure that there’s the appropriate density of instruments on the ground so that when an earthquake happens, anywhere in Washington, Oregon and California, it’s detected appropriately, can be assessed within seconds for how big of an event it is, and then the alert can go out as the event is unfolding, in real time, to surrounding communities.

But I understand a lot of people are wondering: When will I get something like an AMBER 听Alert or a weather alert, where my phone will buzz and tell me the earthquake shaking is on its way? There are still some technological challenges to overcome in order to make that work. The reason is that an earthquake alert has to be real-time down to a couple of seconds. I just moved here from the Midwest, where you might get a severe weather alert, say for a tornado. If it got to your phone 30 seconds after it was issued, that’s no big deal because you typically have maybe 10 minutes of warning. ShakeAlert has a technological need to be issued and reach everyone鈥檚 cell phone within just a few seconds in order to be useful, and that is still very much a challenge, for technical reasons surrounding how the phone networks actually work.

The City of Los Angeles is going to be pushing notifications to 35,000 city and county employees first, starting with City Hall, and the mayor would like to push it out to 4 million Angelenos next year. AT&T and other companies are developing apps that will try to do this massive push of data to thousands and then millions of phones.

We’ll let them pilot that in L.A. where there are more frequent, smaller earthquakes, and that will test the system. And then we’ll use what we learn from that and adapt it for our situation here in the Northwest.

How is it that Mexico City and Japan already have earthquake early warning systems? Why is it taking longer to implement in the U.S.?

HT: Mexico City has a fairly uncomplicated geologic situation for earthquake alerts. Part of the reason is that Mexico City is concerned specifically with earthquakes on the subduction fault that are relatively deep, and where the fault line is relatively far away from Mexico City, but still generates strong shaking in Mexico City. That gives them up to a minute or more of warning time in Mexico City before the shaking is strong there. So the alert system worked pretty well for their 2017 earthquakes.

The Japanese system is more like the system that we would aspire to, ultimately, with ShakeAlert. Of course Japan has really high earthquake hazards and very frequent events. They鈥檝e invested enormously in their system, and the country is just blanketed with instruments. In Japan, that system has been fully operational for a number of years now.

Three years ago, I was in Japan in the middle of giving a talk at a scientific conference, and suddenly I felt my cell phone start buzzing in my pocket, and then I realized it was not just my phone, it was every phone in the room, plus the PA system. I didn’t understand, but then the room started shaking. What my phone, and all the phones, were doing was giving a message in Japanese: “Earthquake detected, moderate shaking expected in 5, 4, 3, 2鈥�”

There are some technological differences between the cellular communications networks in Japan and those in the U.S. that we still have to solve here. So they are ahead of us on earthquake warning, but they’re also showing the way in how to do this well.

Japan is also instrumenting their offshore much better than we are. Their main homeland-security issue as they see it is earthquakes and tsunamis, so billions of dollars are being spent on studying the offshore region. We’re not quite there yet to anything like that level, but we’re really pushing for this in Cascadia, and also in Alaska.

How did you become interested in seismology?

HT: As an undergrad I became a geology major, and I became interested in the young stuff, geologically speaking, the active plate tectonic systems and especially subduction zones, like Cascadia. Most of my Ph.D. project was on the offshore Cascadia region. My first project as a doctoral student was diving in the Alvin submarine off the coast of Oregon down to the deep sea trench and literally mapping active faults on the seabed by looking out the window of the submarine. Relating that view to our seismic-wave images of the subsurface geology allowed me to discover new things about how the subduction fault works. I was hooked.

What changes have you seen in earthquake science?

HT: I started graduate school at UC Santa Cruz in 1989, and at that time there hadn’t been a magnitude-9 earthquake anywhere on the planet since 1964, since before I was born. And there wasn’t one until 2004, until well after I’d finished my Ph.D. The whole time I was doing my studies we were focused on active subduction zones, and of course there were big earthquakes around the world, but we didn’t have this stuff in the public eye and in the media because there was no direct experience of a major, Pacific-wide tsunami event. People were just getting the inkling in the 1980s that Cascadia wasn’t a quiet zone but was building up the stress for a future, giant earthquake, probably a magnitude-9. Brian Atwater and Kenji Satake were still figuring out the history of the magnitude-9 鈥� all of that was still to come.

But since the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and the devastation in the Indian Ocean, that was 250,000 lives lost, and then not many years later, first in Chile in 2010 and then in Japan in 2011, with the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, we’ve just seen a massive change. These are the first subduction zone earthquakes that have happened in the modern, digital-instrumentation, satellite-observation era.

This field of science has been massively transformed in the past 15 years or so, and it’s a tremendously exciting place to be, scientifically. It’s transformed my scientific career. Early on, I was mostly focused on trying to figure out the general geologic processes, thinking about things on the hundred-thousand-year to few-million-year time scale. Now I’m focused on how does the Earth鈥檚 geology and the nature of the fault zones directly impact the hazard from the earthquakes. One example is: If a big earthquake happens on the Cascadia subduction fault, it will slip that fault offshore, mostly. We think about the shaking in Seattle, but for the coast the biggest hazard is probably the tsunami. And how the tsunami is generated and how big it is and what areas it affects all depend on whether the fault slips all the way up to the seabed, or whether all the slip is down deeper in the Earth and kind of peters out as you get up to the surface. It changes the pattern of the warping of the seafloor, and that’s what pushes up the water and makes the wave.

We worry a lot about the shape of the faults, and how much of them are locked up or “stuck” so they can generate a big earthquake, whether that locking on the fault is patchy, and how that will affect the pattern of causing a tsunami. So the geological research on these offshore faults is a component of the hazard analysis, which is not the way we used to think about it.

You are currently leading a major research project in Japan, which has seismic risks similar to our region. Can you describe your work there?

HT: The I’ve been working on for nearly 15 years is an integrated project to study a part of Japan’s subduction zone, south of where the 2011 earthquake happened, called the Nankai Trough, off the coast not far from Kyoto and Osaka. A more than 1,000-year historical record exists for earthquakes in that region, and about every 90 to 120 years there’s a magnitude-8 earthquake with an associated tsunami. We went there long before the 2011 earthquake. The integrated project is imaging the seafloor and the faults below it and then drilling holes using an amazing piece of seagoing technology, a scientific drilling ship that looks like an offshore oil drilling ship. But we’re not drilling for oil 鈥� we’re drilling for data.

By drilling down into and around the fault zones we can do a couple of things. One is sample the material in the faults. There are all kinds of geological clues as to what the conditions have been like during the earthquake slips. Literally, during the seconds the earthquake takes, it leaves a geologic record in the rocks. We can then use the boreholes themselves as observatories, and put instruments in them: special kinds of seismometers that go into the fault zone, temperature sensors, pressure sensors. Those let us see the deformation or strain in the rock, how it’s bending and creeping and building up toward a future earthquake.

It’s a huge open question whether fault zones show you anything before the earthquake occurs. From surface measurements, we’ve pretty much established that there is no detectable long-term precursor to earthquakes in general. There’s no good earthquake prediction mechanism today based in science. But there’s a hint that for these especially giant events, some new kinds of data recorded offshore and even down in these holes are showing us that maybe the faults start to pop and creak and strain before the earthquake starts, over the span of hours to weeks, maybe even months to years. That’s a major goal of research now: not predicting earthquakes, but understanding whether there’s even a physical basis for predicting earthquakes 鈥� or not.

We first proposed the project, mostly led by U.S. and Japanese scientists, as a coalition effort to comprehensively study this part of the world as a kind of a case study that applies to all subduction zones. Nankai and Cascadia are sister subduction zones, because they’re similar in many ways.

The drilling ship is heading back out to our main site off Japan very soon in October. At the site, beneath 2 kilometers (more than a mile) of seawater at the bottom of the ocean, lies the top of a hole we have already drilled 3 kilometers down from the seabed. It鈥檚 lined with steel pipe, just like an oil well is 鈥渃ased.鈥� It’s all in place down to 3 kilometers, but our fault zone lies at 5 kilometers depth, so we need to extend this borehole from 3 kilometers to 5 kilometers to reach it.

Our goal from October to March is to finish drilling that hole, the culmination of the whole project. We started our drilling in 2007, and it has proceeded in many stages as we’ve been working our way to build a deep observatory borehole. I’ll be going to sea from just before Christmas to early February with a huge team of almost 200 people, trying to make sure that our borehole gets drilled safely and makes it to our target zone.

Once all the instruments are connected we’ll be studying the fault during the period between earthquakes to understand the forces and stresses that accumulate in the fault to create an earthquake. Of course, if an earthquake occurs during the experiment, and these instruments will be in place for decades so that’s possible, these instruments will record right up to the earthquake, and it will be a unique and valuable study of how a fault works. But even without an earthquake, it would be the first time in the world that we have that level of instrumentation on a major fault like this.

What about clustering of earthquakes? Should we be worried that the Pacific Rim has been pretty active, or when we hear about local swarms of earthquakes?

HT: One thing we can say is when little earthquakes occur, and even swarms of earthquakes, there’s no obvious direct link that means that we’re about to get a big earthquake. When it’s in a volcano, people pay a lot of attention to those earthquake swarms, because it can mean that magma is moving inside the volcano and there’s potential for eruption. Volcanic eruption is a bit of a different story than the crustal faults. There is always activity somewhere around the Pacific Rim, so when a few faraway earthquakes make the news in a short period of time, sometimes people wonder if that means the Big One is more imminent here. At long distances there鈥檚 just no evidence that major earthquakes are any more or less likely after other ones. That鈥檚 been studied exhaustively, so I don鈥檛 think people should worry about that.

Broadly speaking, small events nearby shouldn’t make people start freaking out, either. We just don’t see patterns like that in big subduction zones. Of course, if we start to see something really unusual happening, then the PNSN folks will be very focused on it, and we can imagine a scenario where we might start talking to the public, but that’s a long way out.

So should people be worried? For the Cascadia Subduction Zone we absolutely expect a very large earthquake to happen someday. But right now, that day could be later this afternoon, or it could be 150 years from now, and there’s not much difference in the likelihood of either of those.

And the Cascadia Subduction Zone is far from the only hazard in this region. There are a number of faults below our feet that could have effects that are different from the so-called ‘Big One.’ Some of those present significant earthquake hazards because, while they might happen relatively infrequently, they could have dangerous effects. We could have a magnitude-7 slip on the Seattle fault, which is closer to major cities and relatively shallow, rather than something bigger that’s much farther away, and that could create really strong shaking in this region. It would be more like the Kobe earthquake in Japan, or the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand. That鈥檚 a very serious concern but fortunately there鈥檚 also evidence those earthquakes are quite rare, with perhaps thousands of years between them.

My attitude is: Don’t be afraid that it’s imminent, but just recognize that the hazard is there and be prepared. You should know what your game plan is for your family and your home, and take the steps that are recommended for making sure you’re as safe as possible.

Here鈥檚 one perspective: I think about earthquake hazard all the time, and yet I just moved here. I have no hesitation about living in this region despite knowing the risks, because it’s something to be prepared for rather than be freaked out by. That’s my vote of confidence that it’s not too scary.

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For more information, contact Tobin at 206-543-6790 or htobin@uw.edu.

For general questions and tours of the PNSN facility, contact communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

, a research professor in the UW’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, has been named the interim director of the UW-based .听 PNSN is a collaboration between the 91探花, the University of Oregon and the U.S. Geological Survey that tracks earthquake and volcano activity throughout the two states, with the support of federal, state and private funding.

Former PNSN director John Vidale stepped down to accept a faculty position at the University of Southern California and direct the in Los Angeles. The search for his permanent replacement is expected to take about one year.

In the interim, Bodin will also serve as the Washington’s state seismologist, serving on the Washington state that makes seismic policy recommendations to the state’s Emergency Management Division and Gov. Jay Inslee, as well as answering questions from reporters and the public about earthquake and volcanoes.

Bodin is an observational seismologist whose research expertise includes studies of earthquake source physics, seismic wave propagation, and the impacts of strong ground shaking on soils.听 Bodin spent the first part of his career at the University of Memphis. In Tennessee he studied earthquake processes and hazards associated with earthquakes that occur far from tectonic plate boundaries. Such earthquakes are infrequent and poorly understood, but have very large impacts when they do occur. He also performed field studies in the aftermath of large earthquakes in Mexico, California, India and Taiwan, and was part of a U.S. team monitoring underground nuclear testing in the former Soviet Union.

Bodin joined the 91探花faculty in 2006 to become manager of the PNSN. During more than a decade since he has overseen upgrades of the network’s technology to enable faster and more accurate detection, analysis and communication of ground shaking from a major earthquake. These network improvements have led to the inclusion of Washington and Oregon into , a West Coast-wide earthquake early warning system that will provide advance warnings for imminent large earthquakes. Bodin has also published academic papers on triggered earthquakes and tremors; seismic wave propagation and aftershocks; exploring swarm seismicity in Richland and Spokane, Washington; and on the potential for developing earthquake early warning systems in Hawaii and Chile.

Bodin earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, San Diego, his master’s at California’s Humboldt State University and his doctorate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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For more information, contact Bodin at bodin@uw.edu or 206-616-7315 or PNSN communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

The first Pacific Northwest pilot users of the system are Bothell, Wash.-based , which will use the alerts to secure municipal water and sewer systems so these structures remain usable after a major quake. Oregon’s first test user, the , will use alerts to lower water levels in a canal above a residential area in Oregon, and to stop turbines at a river power plant. A parallel launch event was held in Eugene the same day.

Both utility providers participated in a that has been learning about the system since early 2015 from the UW-based , which coordinates the system in Washington and Oregon.

“We are thrilled to take the first steps in integrating earthquake early warning into life in the Pacific Northwest,” , 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “Our teamwork has made it possible to reach this milestone so quickly.”

The ShakeAlert system will provide seconds to minutes of warning before damaging shaking arrives. That would be enough time to get out of a dangerous building, turn off a vehicle, stop surgeries and other delicate activities, and prepare for the imminent ground shaking.

Other speakers at the event included David Applegate, USGS acting deputy director; Doug Given, USGS coordinator of earthquake early warning; U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Port Angeles); Maximilian Dixon, earthquake program manager at Washington State Emergency Management Division; and Dan Ervin, chair of RH2 Engineering.

The system’s development at the USGS and four partner universities has been with a combination of public and private grants. Development of ShakeAlert at the 91探花has been supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Amazon Catalyst program and Puget Sound Energy.

Three new staff members have been hired in the 91探花Department of Earth and Space Sciences as part of the effort. is the Pacific Northwest’s new ShakeAlert coordinator, and will be answering questions about the system and obtaining permits for approximately 200 new Pacific Northwest sites. is a new programmer who will work on improving quality control for the alerts. and are new field technicians who will assist with upgrading existing seismometers and assist with installing new sensors.

Given, of the USGS, said the agency plans to begin limited public alerts in 2018, but that more seismometers will be needed to provide reliable alerts for communities throughout the earthquake-prone regions.

“At the 91探花College of the Environment, ShakeAlert is a shining example of our commitment to engaging public, private, nonprofit and academic partners in solving the greatest environmental challenges of our time,” 91探花College of the Environment Dean said in her remarks. “Together, we co-create scientific solutions that have real impacts on people鈥檚 lives.”

The USGS estimates $38.3 million in initial costs to complete a reliable, public system for the entire West Coast, and $16.1 million each year to maintain and operate the ShakeAlert system. About half of the operational costs have been funded so far, researchers say.

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu, or seismic network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

The UW-based is helping to develop , an automated alert system that could save lives and prevent millions of dollars in damages by providing seconds to minutes of warning before shaking begins.

The UW; the University of California, Berkeley; California Institute of Technology; and the U.S. Geological Survey were in funding today from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to help advance the earthquake early warning system. The 91探花group will study the implementation of a network of sensors on the ocean floor to provide early warning for earthquakes from the Cascadia subduction zone, the largest threat for a catastrophic earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.

“Earthquakes pose tremendous risk to our communities, and so researchers from the 91探花and our partners are working with private funders and city, state and federal governments to create an accurate, responsive early warning system,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, who at the summit.

“ShakeAlert’s benefits are clear: It will save lives and reduce the costs of major earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest. We’re fortunate to have strong bipartisan support that can help ShakeAlert become a key part of our efforts to make the West Coast more resilient to major quakes.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s office today its support with new commitments toward earthquake preparedness, including $4.6 million to identify and map geologic hazards in the state.

The White House on Feb. 2 also issued an to boost earthquake readiness standards in federal buildings throughout the nation.

Other new commitments to earthquake readiness in the Pacific Northwest include:

• is donating $100,000 to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network over four years to buy eight strong-motion seismometers that will be installed throughout Washington to improve the state’s earthquake early warning capability.
• , a partnership launched last year between Amazon Corp. and the UW, is funding a 91探花group that will develop MegaShake, a new system that will combine GPS and seismic data to accurately identify incoming earthquakes above a magnitude 7.
• In Oregon, Intel Corp. is beginning discussions this week to broaden its support for earthquake early warning systems for the Portland area and throughout the Pacific Northwest.

The new expenditures follow a made in July by the U.S. Geological Survey to the 91探花and three other West Coast universities to develop the ShakeAlert tool.

A bipartisan West Coast congressional delegation, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Port Angeles, and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, has been instrumental in elevating the need for earthquake warning to the national level and advocating for increased funding. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina, have also urged the federal government to increase its support for earthquake early warning implementation.

“We are halfway there” in terms of funding, Vidale said at the White House summit. “As a scientist, it’s most exciting and gratifying to help bring earthquake early warning to fruition for my country.”

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For more information, contact Vidale at vidale@uw.edu or 310-210-2131. He will be back in Seattle on Thursday, Feb. 4. For Seattle interviews earlier this week, contact research scientist Brendan Crowell at crowellb@uw.edu.

See also a White House on the new commitments toward advancing earthquake readiness.

The U.S. Geological Survey听 $5 million in funding that will allow the 91探花 and three other institutions to help transition the prototype earthquake early warning system, under development since 2005, into a public-facing tool.

“The impression you got from the article was that the only advance warning you’d ever get would be barking dogs,” said , a 91探花research professor of Earth and space sciences. Bodin manages the Pacific Northwest’s earthquake early warning system, a tool set to launch within the next few years.

The new award provides funds to the UW, the University of Oregon, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology to help develop a coast-wide system that would detect the first tremors and alert people, seconds or minutes in advance, of incoming ground shaking.

The newly awarded funds were in President Obama’s budget earlier this year, and Congress subsequently approved funding that is being distributed this week. The award includes $4 million shared between the four universities, as well as $1 million in USGS funds for about 150 new and upgraded sensors that will improve the speed and reliability of the West Coast network.

“This will allow us to continue developing and expanding the country’s first earthquake early warning system,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the , which includes the 91探花and University of Oregon. “This is just part of what we need to have a fully operational system, but it is an important step in the right direction.”

The California prototype gave some warning of the in August 2014. The Pacific Northwest prototype, which currently operates separately, recruited its in February. About two dozen agencies and businesses get alerts delivered to their computers and have begun thinking about how they could integrate earthquake alerts into their operations plans.

When finished, in as soon as three years depending on future funding, the warning system will give Seattle and Portland as much as three or four minutes’ warning for a big offshore quake, and as much as 30 seconds for an earthquake on one of the onshore faults. The warning times depend on the epicenter and depth of the quake, the person’s location and the processing time through the seismic network.

In Washington and Oregon, the federal funding will support:

• An additional staff position to fully integrate the current Pacific Northwest prototype system into the West Coast-wide USGS ShakeAlert system
• Improving collaboration with Canadian seismologists who are monitoring seismicity north of the border
• Gradually expanding the Pacific Northwest test user group, which now includes about 20 regional agencies and businesses
• Extending the regional ShakeAlert magnitude estimates to include the largest Pacific Northwest earthquakes, past magnitude 8, using GPS-based methods
• Speeding up a portion of the older data communication infrastructure to improve warning times
• Upgrading 59 of the current 144 contributing seismic stations, distributed between the two states, to improve speed and reliability
• Planning future station deployments

The federal funding will speed up recent progress on the Pacific Northwest portion of the warning system. The regional network has carried out testing, equipment upgrades and algorithm development to make the warnings faster and more reliable. In the past year, with startup funding from the , the UW-based team has built and installed about a dozen new sensors to improve coverage along the coast.

The University of Oregon recently used state funding to to the network, which the university will maintain. The entire network benefits from closely spaced, high-quality sensors in seismically active areas.

The 91探花and its academic partners are also working with a California company to turn the ShakeAlert warnings from a computer-based display into a mobile app.

The fully operational network will require about $16.1 million each year to maintain and run. Vidale testified in Congress earlier this year in support of full funding for the earthquake early warning system. The Washington project has received support from Sen. Patty Murray, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-3rd District) and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-6th District).

“This award from USGS is an important down payment that provides a crucial step toward developing the type of warning system that has saved lives in Japan,” Vidale said.

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu; Pacific Northwest Seismic Network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or bill@ess.washington.edu. In Oregon, contact seismologist Doug Toomey at drt@uoregon.edu.

Adapted from the USGS press release: “.”

The software, implemented by the 91探花-based based on a California tool, is the region’s first warning system for incoming earthquakes. A prototype was shared this week with a group of people from outside the research community.

The trial group includes Boeing, Microsoft, Sound Transit, Providence Hospital and other hospitals, transportation agencies, utilities and emergency managers. Members will meet Tuesday, Feb. 17, on the 91探花campus for a workshop to introduce the system and discuss its potential for emergency planning and response in the region, which spans the coastal area from Northern California to southern British Columbia.

“We have found capable partners that will give us good feedback, but we also value diversity,” said , a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the seismic network, which includes the 91探花and the University of Oregon and is overseen by the U.S. Geological Survey.

“The test group is a cross-section of our region’s economy so we can find the best ways of reducing losses from the next earthquake.”

In Japan, similar earthquake alerts have been used to slow bullet trains to prevent derailment, trigger automated earthquake and tsunami alarms in schools, and shut down expensive manufacturing equipment to avoid damage due to shaking.

Here, some 240 seismometers installed throughout Washington and Oregon currently detect vibrations and send readings to a computer at the UW, where the regional seismic network creates within about 10 minutes after any seismic event.

The new early warning system being tested will create an automated alert as quickly as four seconds after a quake’s fast-moving but harmless is first detected. Depending on the geography, earthquake size and distance to the user, that could mean a few seconds to more than a minute’s warning before people would start to feel the ground-shaking .

Over the coming months, the researchers expect they will run into problems with missed events or having a single event trigger multiple alerts. They hope to work out these kinks for the next year or so, while institutions begin to think about how they might integrate the alerts into their emergency planning.

“The reason we’re working with this limited group is because they have a tolerance for the errors that we know might crop up,” said , a 91探花research professor of Earth and space sciences who is tuning the regional tool.

The 91探花is collaborating on West Coast early earthquake warnings with the University of California, Berkeley and Caltech, the two groups that developed the software. The 91探花joined the existing California collaboration after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and got from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the USGS to develop a system similar to the one that saved lives in Japan.

The California and Pacific Northwest regions collaborate, but currently focus on their own equipment, user groups and distinct types of seismic risks.

California has been testing its version with institutional users for more than a year with the support of the state’s emergency management office. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, recently began using the alerts to slow its trains to prevent crashes.

The new Pacific Northwest tool will by default issue an alert for any earthquakes above magnitude 3, which are generally harmless and occur somewhere in the region about every two to three weeks. Users can move that minimum threshold upward. Magnitude-4 earthquakes generally happen in this region about twice a year, and magnitude-5 earthquakes, which generate noticeable shaking, occur roughly once a year. A last happened here in 1700, but a repeat could come at any time.

The software works on Windows, Apple and Linux desktop computers. Future work will include providing alert messages for mobile devices and other means.

The University of Oregon has, until recently, primarily provided technical assistance for the seismic network, but that role is expanding thanks to federal and state support, said , a professor of geophysics. A $670,000 request in the Oregon governor鈥檚 proposed budget will allow the UO to add additional sensors in the state.

The federal proposed this month by President Obama includes $5 million per year of long-term funding for a West Coast earthquake warning system. That helps reach the $16 million annually that USGS estimates it would cost to implement and maintain a West Coast warning system for the public. A reliable system, Vidale said, would require roughly doubling the current number of seismometers to fill in gaps, replacing older seismometers, updating some telecom equipment to minimize delays in the data transfer, and hiring a larger staff to maintain the equipment.

With funding, alerts could be available to the public within a few years, Vidale said. The goal is to get the technology and the users ready in the two regions, and eventually to merge the two into a single earthquake-alert system that spans the whole West Coast, and perhaps someday other earthquake-prone regions such as Hawaii, Nevada, Utah and Alaska.

“Eventually, we want to provide simple, fast and uniform coverage to protect the citizens and infrastructure,” Vidale said. “This is an exciting first step in that direction.”

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For more information, contact Vidale at 310-210-2131 or vidale@uw.edu, Bodin at 206-616-7315 or bodin@uw.edu, and seismic network communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

The Feb. 17 workshop will be held at the 91探花from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is not open to reporters or the public. Reporters may set up interviews with workshop organizers or attendees; for details contact Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.