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Earthquake early-warning gadget not yet ready for market, say experts

The ``SOS-Life'' digital earthquake-warning system marketed by Life Protection B.V. The Dutch company claims the device can give 120 seconds warning of a major earthquake. Nonsense, say seismologists. PHOTO COURTESY OF LIFE PROTECTION B.V.

Earthquake experts yesterday denounced claims by the seller of an early-warning device saying the product -- introduced on the third anniversary of Taiwan's devastating 921 earthquake -- is not ready for marketing.

Life Protection B.V., the Dutch marketer of the "SOS-Life" digital earthquake-warning system, asserted yesterday that the PDA-sized device "detects certain strengths of seismic waves and goes off up to 120 seconds before the earthquake happens. The 120 seconds of reaction time warns the user to escape prior to the quake."

Leon Teng, a seismologist from the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California attacked the allegation, saying "This claim absolutely cannot be true ... No product can go off before an earthquake happens." He mockingly added that "This invention deserves a Nobel prize."

Teng knows about early seismic detection. He and Central Weather Bureau (CWB) Seismology Center seismologist Wu Yih-min (吳逸民) conducted key research on Taiwan's network of 83 seismic recording stations -- one of the most sophisticated and complete in the world. Even that NT$20 million seismic monitoring system can only give 30 seconds of warning time prior to the arrival of a large earthquake.

That may not seem like much time, but according to the experts, in three to five years time the system hopefully will give authorities enough time to shut off gas lines, stop high-speed trains, save computer databases and alert factories to shut down sensitive chip-making equipment.

The idea is simple: When an earthquake strikes, seismic waves speed away from the epicenter like ripples in a pond. When a large temblor hits, the destructive waves can spread as far as 160km and travel for 40 seconds.

Taking advantage of the fact that electronic information can travel much faster than seismic waves, Wu and Teng devised a computer system that can pinpoint the location and magnitude of an earthquake within seconds and send a warning to areas farther than 75km from the epicenter.

The findings of the two-year study was recently published in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Teng told the Taipei Times in an e-mail interview from California that if the manufacturers could prove their claims of "reliable and timely warning of quakes," they should "publish their findings in a reputable scientific journal."

While Life Protection president Henk Basch did say the makers of the SOS Life, German company PEES GmbH, spent six years developing the product, the only proof that it works comes from the National Science Council's National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taipei (NCREE).

The test certificate, obtained by the Taipei Times, states that a test was carried out on Sept 5, 2002 on the NCREE's earthquake simulating "shaking table" in Hualien. In summary, the report said, "the SOS-Life will only respond to major and potentially life-threatening earthquakes."

Tests reportedly simulated the actual earthquake ground motions observed during the Duzce quake in Turkey in 1999 and the 921 Earthquake in Taiwan in 1999.

The 921 quake occurred three years ago today and killed some 2,400 people and left over 100,000 homeless.

In Duzce, about 115 miles east of Istanbul, an earthquake hit on Nov. 12 and killed nearly 700 people.

According to Wu, for a product that proclaims it will "help save many lives," it has not undergone sufficient testing and was not ready to hit store shelves.

"The testing they did was too rushed [to get it done by the September 21 anniversary] and only rudimentary tests were conducted. ... with no conclusion. More testing would be required before it goes to market," Wu said.

Instead, the device should undergo testing by at least two independent bodies for a period of several years, a step in the taking of any product to market that Life Protection skipped, Wu said.

But Basch's son and the head of marketing for the firm, Leon Basch -- when quizzed whether the product was really ready to be sold in Taiwan -- the global launching pad for the gadget -- responded by saying research was ongoing and that the plan was to do the marketing first.

The local agent for the personal quake alarm, Nissei Electric Group (日星電氣) president Chen Chin-yi (陳金印), said he had a limited number of units in hand and would begin sales of the device from his office for NT$21,000 each. He added that he was currently in talks with Carrefour Taiwan (家樂福) to sell the product.

Yesterday's press event, held in The Netherlands Trade and Investment Office, was opened by the head of the Dutch trade center, Menno Goedhart, who proclaimed to reporters that the device was "studied and approved by authorities."

Throwing cold water on that claim, CWB Seismology Center director Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋) said the test results on the device were inconclusive and that he "did not recommend people to use it."
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