Creation of an Early Warning System for Strong Earthquakes for the Territory of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

Abstract

The article presents a prototype of an early warning system for earthquakes for Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Since large, densely populated cities are located in the seismically active zones of these republics, and there are large hydroelectric power stations and reservoirs, timely warning of emergency services about earthquakes is extremely important. Modeling was carried out for the territory of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to assess the efficiency of using the seismic networks of these countries for an early warning system. It was shown that for most of the region, an earthquake warning with a time reserve of several tens of seconds is possible. As a result, in 2023, the Central-Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) developed an early warning system for earthquakes SES (in the Kyrgyz language—Seismikalyk Eskertuu Sistemasy) based on the ACROSS network of strong motion seismic stations (Kyrgyzstan) and the Emergency Situations Ministry of Uzbekistan. The article briefly examines the structure of the system and its operating principles and presents a comparison with its foreign counterpart, the PRESTo system (Italy). The results of the trial operation of the SES demonstrated that its efficiency for the territory of Kyrgyzstan significantly exceeds that of the PRESTo system. The created system is capable of quickly detecting and locating earthquakes on the territory of Kyrgyzstan with magnitudes of 3.5 or higher, as well as reliably identifying earthquakes that occurred outside the network. It was demonstrated that joint work with data from seismic networks of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan could improve the detection of seismic events and determination of their epicenters, mainly at the junction of networks. Currently, the SES is used in the work of emergency services in Kyrgyzstan.