ALBERT

Description: When accompanied by appropriate training and preparedness of a population, Earthquake Early Warning Systems (EEWS) are effective and viable tools for the real-time reduction of societal exposure to seismic events in metropolitan areas. The Italian Accelerometric Network, RAN, which consists of about five hundred stations installed over all the active seismic zones, as well as many cities and strategic infrastructures in Italy, has the potential to serve as a nation-wide early warning system. In this work, we present a feasibility study for a nation-wide EEWS in Italy obtained by the integration of the RAN and the software platform PRESTo (Satriano et al., 2011). The performance of the RAN-PRESTo EEWS is first assessed by testing it on real strong motion recordings of forty of the largest earthquakes that have occurred during the last ten years in Italy. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to regions that did not experience earthquakes by considering a nation-wide grid of synthetic sources capable of generating Gutenberg-Richter sequences corresponding to the one adopted by the seismic hazard map of the Italian territory. Our results indicate that the RAN-PRESTo EEWS could theoretically provide for higher seismic hazard areas reliable alert messages within about 5 to 10 seconds and maximum lead-times of about 25 seconds. In case of large events (M 〉 6.5), this amount of lead-time would be sufficient for taking basic protective measures (e.g. duck and cover, move away from windows or equipment) in tens to hundreds municipalities affected by large ground shaking.