Feds award $4M to improve earthquake early warning system

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is awarding $4 million in federal funding to four universities to help speed up the creation of an early earthquake warning system on the West Coast.

California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, the University of Washington and the University of Oregon will receive the funding, which is part of a $5 million increase to the USGS that Congress approved this year.

{mosads}USGS said it has already used $1 million to purchase new sensor equipment for the early earthquake warning system.

The universities will be tasked with developing scientific algorithms to quickly detect potentially damaging earthquakes and upgrade sensors to improve the speed and reliability of the warnings. USGS said it began funding this type of research in 2006.

A ShakeAlert system, which the universities will help push into the production phase, is currently issuing alerts to a group of test users in California, Oregon and Washington state.

USGS said these early warning systems helped in the August 2014 magnitude-6.0 earthquake that struck South Napa, Calif., giving people in San Francisco a nine-second warning. The early warning systems also helped in the magnitude-3.8 earthquake that hit Los Angeles in May.