Quake warning system's first cable installed

“We finally have the first undersea cable for quake detection,” said CWB Director-General Shin Tzay-chyn at a ceremony held yesterday to mark the landing of the cable in Toucheng, of the northeastern county of Yilan.

Under the Marine Cable Hosted Observatory (MACHO) program, the CWB has contracted Japan's NEC Corp. to lay a 45-kilometer undersea cable off the coast of Toucheng, and will install two earthquake sensors and one tsunami gauge on the terminal section of the cable, as most of the quakes in Taiwan strike off the island's east coast.

Shin said installation of the entire detection system will be completed in June, and the system will become operational in October.

When an earthquake or tsunami occurs, seismic data detected by seismometers or pressure gauges in the sea can be delivered through the Toucheng station to the bureau via the fiber-optic cable and leased line.

“Through the detection system, we can have at least 10 seconds of warning in an earthquake and 10 minutes in a tsunami,” Shin said.

The CWB head stressed that his bureau will move to strive for an additional budget of NT$500 million in 2012 or 2013 to implement the phase-two installation of the underwater quake detection system, extending the cable line to at least 100 kilometers in 2013 to better monitor tectonic plate movements near Taiwan. The ongoing phase-one project costs around NT$430 million.

Kuo Kai-wen, director general of CWB's Seismological Center, said after the phase-two system is completed in 2013 the warning time for an earthquake can be doubled to 20 seconds and that for a tsunami also doubled to 20 minutes.

Kuo said his center is now able to detect up to 18,000 quakes in Taiwan per year, with 70 percent striking off the island's east coast.

The new quake sensors would improve the detection rate of slight tremors by 50 percent, which would help provide better information on seismic activity and greatly enhance the government's disaster mitigation capabilities.

“The MACHO system provides us with another perspective in studying the characteristics of earthquakes, such as locating their epicenters more precisely,” said Wang Chau-chang, an associate professor at National Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of Undersea Technology.

A submarine system, which has already been in use by the Japanese government since 1979, has proved effective in warning residents during the massive March 11 earthquake that struck Japan, said NEC's representative Noriyuki Fujiwara.

“Since the geologic structure of Taiwan's east coast is similar to that of Japan's east coast, we expect the system to contribute greatly to Taiwan's pre-disaster mitigation efforts,” he said.

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