Seismologists have created a new system that has the potential to warn populations of an oncoming tsunami only minutes after an earthquake under water has occurred. Thus, this system, known as RTerg, has the capability of greatly reducing the death toll within areas that will get hit by a sudden tsunami. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed this system that correctly identified the magnitude of the 2010 Sumatran earthquake at 7.8, calling it a destructive tsunami earthquake. Because the ocean is so entirely deep, vertical deformation of the ocean floor is considered horizontally smooth, thus when plates of the ocean floor shift, the size of the plate uplift is pretty small. When these types of earthquake occur under the ocean water, the waves that form as a result are only about twenty centimeters in height. Tsunami earthquakes however, occur a bit differently in that the the rate at which they rupture is slower and propagate to the sea floor, right to the trench. When this happens, the vertical shift in the plates is much larger, which causes much higher waves -- waves up to seventeen meters tall. These types of waves leave populated areas with large death tolls up to approximately four hundred and thirty people. Tsunami earthquakes fool most people in that it is difficult to measure their magnitude due to their occurrence in shallow areas, thus when a tsunami earthquake begins, most people wave off the tremble if they even feel it at all, judging that it is not a big deal. As stated before, tsunami earthquakes usually rupture at a slower pace than other underwater earthquakes and therefore, the RTerg uses algorithmic tools to match these attributes to a detected quake. If an underwater earthquake appears to be rupturing slower than normal, an alert is sent to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center as well. The system works like this: RTerg receives a notification from a tsunami warning center that an earthquake has occurred somewhere. From the notice, RTerg gets information such as the earthquake's location, depth, and approximate magnitude. If the magnitude is over a six and a half, then more data is received pertaining to one hundred and fifty seismic stations around the world. When that information is collected, algorithms are utilizes to run through each second of the rupture to determine the incremental energy growth, which in turn gives scientists an idea of weather or not the quake is a tsunami earthquake or not.
This system developed by seismologists could potentially have some excellent benefits upon countries that do not have much defense against natural disasters such as tsunamis. In the past, tsunamis have hit countries and completely wiped out great proportions of populations because the individuals had no protection or idea on what to do in the situation. Thus, this article relates to the real work because it speaks of a new system developed to protect areas from suffering great loss due to a future tsunami. The RTerg system can warn areas ahead of time when a possible tsunami is coming because the system is notified if a tsunami earthquake has occurred on the ocean's floor. Therefore, this system's biggest accomplishment would be its ability to decrease the death toll in dangerous conditions such as a massive tsunami. If researchers are able to create systems that can determine if a destructive tsunami is about to hit and warn residents in certain areas of the oncoming threat before it hits, then there is potential for similar systems that can better or more accurately predict natural disasters such as a hurricane, tornado, flood, etc. If more of these systems were created by researchers, then natural disasters would become less of a threat to humankind and more scientific research can go towards different areas such as how to decrease to occurrence of these events or protection against these events so that the damage in the areas is not as high.
I chose this article because of its relation to natural disasters. Specific natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina have always interested me because of the horrific damage that they can bring about and the fact that it seems as though these types of disasters dominate humankind despite the fact that we are living beings and they are simply just random, severe events brought about by nature. Tsunamis are natural disasters that are not often in the news unless there has been a recent occurrence of one or underwater earthquake action that brings up the idea of one in the near future. The article is important to society because it describes a system created by scientists in Georgia that can greatly decrease the number of deaths that may occur in the quick, severe natural disaster known as a tsunami. It is especially important after the infamous tsunami that occurred in Indonesia in the year of 2004 because of the sheer devastation that that underwater quake caused. When that tsunami hit, news stations all over the world kept everyone up to date on the damage, death toll, plans of action being taken, etc. The world wanted to know in turn what can be done in future situations similar to these and now this article provides a response. The RTerg system is capable of notifying locals in areas that are at risk of a tsunami hit after detected quake activity underwater so that they can flee to safety before the damage is done. It has been several years since the tsunami hit in Indonesia and this system is just now having information released to society. Hurricane Katrina is coming upon its same anniversary within the next few years, which may give society hope that there are systems currently being worked upon that can give detrimental information out to local residents if a disaster at the magnitude of that massive hurricane is about to hit again.
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=64749
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