Case Study: India

Background

• India is situated in a highly active seismic zone originating from the Himalaya region whose terrain poses a difficult monitoring challenge
• The zone straddles the borders of Pakistan, Nepal, China and India such that any early warning system needs to be able to address potential cross-border events

Project

• We deployed 3 array stations and 2 single-sensor stations in Uttarakhand state in cooperation with the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee state in cooperation with the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
• The challenging deployment contended with difficult terrain, extreme weather, and limited 2G wireless communications infrastructure

Results

• A magnitude 4.5 earthquake occurred in the state of Himachal Pradesh in north India, about 270 km away from our network, in March 2020 
• Our system accurately detected the event in real time, while the Indian network failed to do so
• We received funding from a joint Israel-India research fund to plan a national network. Based on the success of the pilot, we received a grant from the World Bank to deploy additional stations. We have also begun a research project jointly funded by the Indian and Israeli governments to create a blueprint for a vast regional network along the Himalayas