Submitted Abstract
In recent years, significant advances have been made in the development of earthquake early warning systems in various earthquake-prone regions around the world. In simple terms, these systems take advantage of the fact that information about the onset of a potentially damaging earthquake can be processed and transmitted faster via modern communication tools than the speed of the travelling seismic waves, allowing to issue warnings on the order of seconds up to minutes in some cases before the damaging waves reach the target of interest to be protected. While some of these systems are at a very mature state, in particular in regions where excellent infrastructure is available (e.g., California, Japan), this is not the case in many economically developing countries. Some of these countries face an extraordinary level of seismic risk, yet large-scale seismic networks cannot be funded, and the principles used in such elaborate systems are not simply transportable to these situations. Significant research efforts are still underway to develop optimal systems for such cases, allowing for the extraction of a maximum of information from a minimum number of recordings.Earthquake early warning does however not stop with the estimation of the ground shaking that the target may expect in the seconds/minutes to come. In many regions, the situation is highly complicated by the potential generation of earthquake-triggered secondary effects, such as tsunamis or landslides. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan is a tragic example of the importance to integrate early warning and risk mitigation procedures for ground shaking and these associated risks. In this endeavour, it is crucial to take into account the specific requirements of the end users in order to make early warning useful for society. For example, critical facilities such as nuclear power plants, large dams, chemical factories, public transportation systems etc. present highly variable such requirements and as rule also involve the need for advanced real-time structural monitoring.These issues still raise a wide range of research questions, and these clearly need to be addressed at the interface of the seismological and engineering communities. With the proposed meeting, we wish to provide a platform for exchange of ideas and gather around one table scientists and engineers from Europe and around the world, including both researchers and engineering practioners, to discuss and look for solutions to the problems still encountered. This workshop will thus contribute to improve the mutual understanding of the requirements and specifications that the different communities are subject to, consolidate conflicting views and foster the collaboration at the interface of fundamental research and engineering implementation.