THE PUERTO RICO SEISMIC NETWORK (PRSN)THE BROADCAST SYSTEM: A user friendly server/client GUI to broadcast earthquake/tsunami messages, generate ShakeMaps, Focal Solutions and to update catalogues

V. Huérfano¹, G Baez² and E. Vanacore³ Puerto Rico Seismic Network, UPRM, Geology

¹victor@prsn.uprm.edu ²Gisela@prsn.uprm.edu ³vanacore@prsn.uprm.edu

ABSTRACT

The Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN) has historically provided locations and magnitudes for earthquakes in the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands (PRVI) region. PRSN is the reporting authority for the region bounded by latitudes 17.0N to 20.0N, and longitudes 63.5W to 69.0W (AOR). The mission of the (PRSN) is to monitor and rapidly determine the location and size of all earthquakes and support NTWC to determine the Tsunami alert level in the Area of Responsibility (AOR) and to immediately disseminate this information to concerned agencies, scientists, and the general public. The PRSN compiles and maintains an extensive seismic database of earthquake parameters, continuous waveforms (earthquakes, GPS and sea level) and their effects which serve as a solid foundation for basic and applied earth science/oceanography research in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.The PRSN runs Earthworm software to acquire and write waveforms to disk for permanent archival. Automatic locations and alerts are generated for events in Puerto Rico, the Intra America Seas, and the Atlantic by the EarlyBird system (Whitmore and Sokolowski, 2002), which monitors PRSN stations as well as more than 100 additional stations operated by national networks in North, Central and South America and other sites in the Caribbean. The PRDANIS (Puerto Rico Data Analysis and Information System) software, developed by PRSN, supports manual locations and reviews of automatic locations of events within the PRSN AOR, using all the broadband, strong-motion and short-period waveforms (Figure 1). Rapidly reviewed information of the earthquake location and size, fault geometry and the geographic distribution of ground shaking in relation to the population and infrastructure at risk, can assist emergency response communities in efficient and optimized allocation of resources following a large earthquake or a regional treat of tsunami. As part of the tsunami and earthquake response protocol, we developed a tool to help the PRSN personnel on duty (24/7) with the generation of earthquake and tsunami products (bulletins, ShakeMaps, focal mechanisms, etc) and the rapid dissemination of the information to local authorities, media and the general public. Automatic or reviewed locations came from different sources, and the user can select the method to broadcast the messages using several ways like direct email trough service lists, FEEDS, Social media, a server/client tool to push messages to a remote display client, ANSS/CISN, distributed web pages (nodes), SMS gateways.

THE BROADCAST SYSTEM – SERVER

This is a near real Time software for distribution of reviewed Earthquake and Tsunami information via the Internet (mainly in Spanish). Integrated with an interactive GUI (graphical user interface), the system can receive messages via tcl socket, cloud or memory sharing into a central ring which once a message is received wait for watch-stander reviews and start several processes like rapid notification trough message aggregators, feeds, cloud services, email service lists, App’s, MSM gateways and the ANSS/CISN. In addition, the GUI connects to remote servers to initiate the ShakeMap generation, focal geometry determination, Tsunami ETA’s (estimated travel arrivals), the update of earthquake catalogues, data bases (MySQL), and the social media blogs. One of main features of this system is the ability to update the PRSN cloud services and the web page nodes, this is a distributed load-balancing web servers. The main delivery tool is a GUI client which is continuously listening for new information in the server side. All the information is storage in a central mySQL data base (Figure 2). The broadcast server is continuously listening EarthWorm or EarlyBird automatic location buffers as well as PR DANIS reviewed locations, and a module let the system digest Tsunami Warning Center bulletins and the USGS/NEIC ENS messages. By default, the system is configured to run in manual mode. Although an automatic configuration is available, the PRSN will issue only reviewed earthquake and tsunami messages to the Official Warning Points.

As soon as an EarthQuake is detected or procesed by the monitoring systems (earthquake/tsunami information data sources), the broadcast refresh the list and the solution shell. The user can select in the “Earthquake/Tsunami Messages” menu to edit pre-configured earthquake or tsunami reports. Also, the user can select the broadcasting tool, if using a mail server or updating the central database and pushing a tcl socket message. The “Send BroadCast” command will activate all the menus and proceed with the call back to external routines.

The “Earthquake and Tsunami popups” provide a list of options like the Maximum MM Intensity which can be obtained by online CIIM reports through the Did you feel it? tool, from reports, or from the instrumental ShakeMap. In the “Earthquake Damage Report” the shift analyst can navigate from a list of options and select the one that explain the level of damages. The information provided in the “Earthquake Felt Reports” and in the “PRSN Advisories” is used for the GUI client to alert or advise any further action and the sites where the event was reported as felt. The “Tsunami Report Popup” should be used if a tsunami message is needed to be issued. That is strictly programed following to the local protocol and the information will be issued only to the official warning points or official dissemination tools (feeds, sms, social media). The selection includes pre-programed options (Tsunami Alert Level) and a tool to compute ETA’s, and if Tide Gauges data are available, user can add observed tsunami wave arrivals. An advisory window is also available to include some guidance in the statements.

THE BROADCAST SYSTEM – CLIENT

The BroadCast client is a pure TCL tcp/ip program that receives server messages and run as a service or daemon. Calling a set of routines, webserver port, cloud services or listening a tcl socket, the client can delivery the alerts in two ways: (1) via a rss notify windows popup or (2) connecting to a 42’ wide dedicated display.

2. Dedicated display: This service is recommend for tsunami warning focal points or agencies dedicated to emergency response. There are three paned windows: the left one displays earthquake parametric information as location, magnitude, etc., the center child displays more extended earthquake information and the Phase arrival times, and the right which is the tsunami or earthquake information window displays reports or advisory messages like damages, tsunami bulletins or wave travel times, etc. This client if fully configurable and users can select the region of interest (map), the type of messages, sound alarms, etc. This client is autonomous and minimum maintenance is required.

Acknowledgements

We thanks to all MIDAS (MIDdle American Seismic Networks), meteorological offices, sea level observatories and geodesic agencies in the Caribbean for providing real time data access under the IOC/ICG Caribe EWS framework (Figure 3). Financial or technical support from the United States ANSS (Advance National Seismic System), the NTWC (National Tsunami Warning Center), The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) – National weather Service (NWS), The FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration), the PR-SEMA (Puerto Rico State Emergency Management Administration) and the University pf Puerto Rico is greatly appreciated.

EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI PROTOCOL

There are earthquake information and tsunami warning centers, emergency management agencies and weather forecasting offices that could be involved in case of a significant earthquake or tsunami. The four lead agencies in Puerto Rico are: PRSN, the Puerto Rico State Emergency Management and Disaster Administration Agency (PR SEMA), the National Weather Service Forecasting Office in San Juan (NWS/SFO) and the National Tsunami Warning Center (NTWC/NWS). The PRSN would also keep communication with the U. S. Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA), the Department of Disaster Management of the British Virgin Islands (ODP) as well as the Meteorological agency (IONAMET) and Seismological Service (ISU) of the Dominican Republic . The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) of the USGS could also provide critical earthquake information. In case of a significant regional or teleseismic earthquake or tsunami, other regional and international seismic networks and centers, and emergency management agencies could have been contacted.The PRSN may take less than five minutes to respond with reviewed locations. The PR/VI protocol includes the activation of the EAS (Emergency Alert System) and the NOAA radio by the NWS/SFO; and the Interoperability system by the PR-SEMA; local all hazard sirens are activated by the local authorities. The messages included in the protocol are: felt earthquake, tsunami information statement, tsunami warning, tsunami watch, tsunami advisory and tsunami cancelation At the moment, the criteria used to issue the messages, are earthquake magnitude and location or the earthquake intensity and/or reliable reports. The criteria of intensity is very important for local earthquakes given that the tsunami can reach the shores of the region within few minutes of the earthquake and the time taken to get parametric information (magnitude, location) can take much longer.

Figure 1. EarthWorm/EarlyBid/PR DANIS architecture (based on Earle, 2003)c

Figure 2. The PR DANIS (Data ANalysis and Information System) – BroadCast System is a modular package to disseminate earthquake and tsunamis messages via dedicate lines to official warning points. Information sources could be local or remote and the recipients can be configured to meet local protocol requirements.

1. RSS Popup: When a new message is received, a sound blaster alarm is activated via tcom tcl package. The popup windows can be configured to vanish each user seconds or keep the information in the screen until manual removal. The displayed information is specific to alert emergency personnel or public connected to the aggregator in case of earthquake occurrence and the tsunami alert level associated.

Figure 3. IOC/ICG CARIBE EWS (Early Warning System) data sharing networks (edited McNamara, et al, 2015)