Delay times of worldwide global earthquake alerts

Quantitative estimates of earthquake losses are needed as soon as possible after an event. A majority of earthquake-prone countries lack the necessary dense seismograph networks, modern communication, and in some places the experts to assess losses immediately, so the earliest possible warnings must come from global information and international experts. Earthquakes of interest to us are in most areas of the world M ≥ 6. In this article, we have analyzed the response time for distributing source parameter estimates from: National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) of the US Geological Survey (USGS), the European Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC), and Geophysical Institute-Russian Academy of Science, Obninsk (RAS). In terms of earthquake consequences, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (TWC) issues assessments of the likelihood of tsunamis, the Joint Research Laboratory in Ispra, Italy (JRC) issues alerts listing sociological aspects of the affected region, and we distribute loss estimates, and recently the USGS has started posting impact assessment information on their PAGER web page. Two years ago, the USGS reduced its median delay of distributing earthquake source parameters by a factor of 2 to the currently observed 26 min, and they distribute information for 99% of the events of interest to us. The median delay of EMSC is 41 min, with 30% of our target events reported. RAS reports after 81 min and 30% of the target events. The first tsunami assessments by TWC reach us 18 min (median) after large earthquakes in the Pacific area. The median delay of alerts by the JRC is 44 min (36 min recently). The World Agency for Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction (WAPMERR) distributes detailed loss estimates in 41 min (median). Moment tensor solutions of the USGS, which can be helpful for refining loss estimates, reach us in 78 min (median) for 58% of the earthquakes of interest. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009