A recent study published in the journal "Nature Communications Earth & Environment" reveals how the first signals emitted by an earthquake can be used to track the evolution of the ground fracture over time, potentially alerting the population before seismic waves arrive. A team of researchers from the "Ettore Pancini" Department of Physics at the University of Naples Federico II and the Vesuvius Observatory of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV-OV) conducted the study, titled "Retrospective performance analysis of a ground shaking early warning system for the 2023 Turkey-Syria". The scientists' research demonstrated the potential and effectiveness of a Seismic Early Warning system, which is an immediate seismic alert system that allows them to predict the impact of seismic waves on the territory and send an alert message to the site of interest within a few seconds, even before the waves arrive. Applying it retrospectively to the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the region on the Turkish-Syrian border on February 6, 2023. To assess the effectiveness of the Seismic Early Warning system, hundreds of accelerograms recorded near the epicenter of the Turkish-Syrian earthquake were retrospectively analyzed and acquired by the monitoring network managed by the Turkish Ministry of Interior's AFAD agency, which is in charge of emergency and disaster management. The results showed that an initial alert, issued about 10 seconds after the event began, would have resulted in the correct alert for 95% of the sites within the potentially damaged area, with warning times ranging from 10 to 60 seconds. Furthermore, the Early Warning system has demonstrated that the zone of strong shaking predicted by the P waves can be detected approximately 20 seconds after the fracture occurs.
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