Earthquake Early Warning in New Zealand
Earthquake Early Warning is available and has been working in New Zealand since mid-2014.
The cost effective Palert seismometer range is designed and built in Taiwan by San Lien and sold in New Zealand and
around the world by New Zealand company Jenlogix limited.
Many of Jenlogix clients use the onsite early warning feature of Palerts to provide them with time to mitigate the
impact of the earthquake. Key reasons for implementation have been for health and safety compliance plus infrastructure
and asset protection.
As an example, Wellington clients received a 19 second warning of arrival of the shock wave from the Kaikoura
earthquake.
Jenlogix has many NZ companies and organisations using the Palert, such as Kiwi Rail, Trust Power, Meridian, Callaghan
Innovation, Wellington water, Wellington Electricity, Massey University etc.
As the primary P-wave travels almost twice as fast as the secondary S-wave it is possible to predict the size of the
shock wave. The P-wave algorithm to do this was developed by Professor Wu in response to the destructive Taiwan, Chi Chi
earthquake in 1999.
Early warning has been widely used in Japan and Taiwan for many years and has been proven to be highly reliable. Due to
the low cost of the Palerts, the system was able to be rolled out to over 600 schools in Taiwan at a fraction of the
cost of more traditional systems.
Jenlogix have supplied Palert systems to the USA, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and have opportunities developing in the
Middle East and Indonesia.
Even a single unit can provide early warning however it is only with a country wide system that you can provide a
countdown to the earthquake and the expected intensity warning to the individual sites.