An earthquake warning system for the Delhi metro has been developed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratory.
The system will be put in place so that metro services can be halted if needed. The test system helped stop the Metro services after tremors were felt in the national capital last month.
The Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO) was asked to create a system for detecting quakes that measure above 3 on the Richter Scale.
He also added that the system can be used at nuclear reactor sites, where activities can be stopped in case of an earthquake.
The apparatus, however, cannot be called an ‘early warning system’, for it is set in action only after the tremors.
The CSIO has installed five sensors across different metro locations – Mundka, Botanical Garden, Huda City Centre, Metro Bhawan and Faridabad – comprising seismic warning systems with LAN connectivity with the DMRC network for generation of alarm signal on major earthquake.
It is in operation since August 2015, but was validated last month.
The central control will take a final decision on further course of action based on the response of all the individual nodes.
In countries like Japan, the Metro services stop automatically when it receives such signals.
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