Istanbul Earthquake Rapid Response and the Early Warning System

One hundred strong motion accelerometers have been placed in populated areas of Istanbul, within an area of approximately 50×30 km, to constitute a network that will enable rapid shake map and damage assessment after a damaging earthquake. After triggered by an earthquake, each station will process the streaming strong motion to yield the spectral accelerations at specific periods and will send these parameters in the form of SMS messages to the main data center through available GSM network services. A shake map and damage distribution will be automatically generated. The shake and damage maps will be available on the Internet and will also be pushed to several end users. For earthquake early warning information ten strong motion stations were located as close as possible to the Marmara Fault. The continuous on-line data from these stations will be used to provide near-real time warning for emerging potentially disastrous earthquakes.