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VNIIFTRI metrologists are developing a new earthquake prediction system

Moscow Region, November 24, 2020 –VNIIFTRI specialists and scientists at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Russian Academy of Science’s Far Eastern Branch (IVS FEB RAS) have begun joint work on creating a distributed system for recording seismic activity in Kamchatka.

“Solutions in applied photonics that are developed at VNIIFTRI may provide a promising basis for the development in Russia’s earthquake-prone areas of a regional distributed system for forecasting and recording seismic activity. The system will allow earthquakes to be predicted with high accuracy at the early stages of the activity in the Earth’s crust and damage from disasters to be minimized”, said Igor Blinov, head of the Main Metrological Center of the State Service of Time, Frequency and Determination of Earth Rotation Parameters (GMTs GSVCh).

The new seismic activity forecasting and recording system will help to improve the accuracy of forecasts and to significantly increase (up to three hours) the forecasting time, while also opening up new possibilities for scientific research into the Earth’s interior.

To build a promising seismic monitoring system, VNIIFTRI specialists propose to use their newest developments in the area of optical frequency standards, highly sensitive quantum sensors and detectors, which possess higher sensitivity and a broad frequency range and are more resistant to environmental exposure and less susceptible to electromagnetic interference.

“For investigations in this field to be successful and effective, we need to join efforts with FEB RAS’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. We have formed a working group and have begun work on a roadmap for joint research to build the distributed system. In the course of its development we will discuss possible solutions that we can offer to our colleagues at IVS in order to raise seismic hazard forecasting to a new technological level. A draft program is expected to be presented in mid-December”, said Irina Balakireva, leading researcher at GMTs GSVCh.

The roadmap will also include a local project to test some of the elements of the distributed seismic activity recording system in 2021. The time frame for the project will be specified during the program development process.