Kanchan Aggarwal, PhD Scholar at IIT Madras did the research under the guidance of Prof Arun K Tangirala, Department of Chemical Engineering. The findings of their research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

New Delhi: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras researchers claim they have developed a new approach for accurate detection of earthquakes. The new method will provide a small lead time which will be helpful in saving lives, they said.
"An estimate of accurate time of arrival of non-destructive waves of earthquakes would not only help in developing a robust Early Warning System but also gives a lead time of approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes (range may vary primarily depending on the distance of epicentre location from the monitoring site or plant) till the destructive surface waves hit the ground," an official statement said.

This lead time is sufficient to shut down nuclear reactors, metro services, park elevators and for other measures that can save countless lives, it added.

Kanchan Aggarwal, PhD Scholar at IIT Madras did the research under the guidance of Prof Arun K Tangirala, Department of Chemical Engineering. The findings of their research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Highlighting the practical applications of the research, Prof Tangirala said, "The proposed framework is not necessarily limited to the detection of seismic events but is generic and can be used for fault detection and isolation in other domains as well. Furthermore, the framework can incorporate any predictive models including the Machine Learning and Deep Learning models, which will reduce the human intervention in the detection."

"Information of P-wave arrival is crucial in determining other source parameters of the event such as magnitude, depth and epicentre location. Therefore, a solution to the P-wave detection problem that is robust, accurate and precise is essential in order to estimate the event details correctly and to reduce the damage caused by the earthquake or other triggered events," said researcher Kanchan Aggarwal.