BEIJING, 6 January (BelTA - People's Daily) - An earthquake early response and warning system, consisting of about 15,000 observation stations, will cover the mainland by 2020, to facilitate disaster identification and the protection of people's lives, vital infrastructure and utilities, according to Chinese media.
Such stations will be spaced 13 kilometers apart in key monitoring areas that span 200 square kilometers in North China, along the southeastern coast, in northwestern Xinjiang and along the so-called North-South Seismic Belt that encircles most of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces, said Zheng Guoguang, new administrator of the China Earthquake Administration.
The stations will be built on average 47 km apart in other areas, Zheng said in an exclusive interview.
The National Seismic Intensity Rapid Reporting and Early Warning project is the largest of its kind in the world, he said.
"We are expected to be able to alert people within seconds following a destructive earthquake measuring 5 or above on the Richter scale, and to release within minutes its intensity distribution," said Zheng, who previously was administrator of the China Meteorological Administration.
It is much more challenging to try to forecast earthquakes, he said. At least 33 percent of the world's continental earthquakes have occurred in China.
Completion of the mammoth project, with startup investment of 2 billion yuan ($290 million), will make it easy to rapidly pinpoint earthquake-afflicted areas, assess disaster situations and implement contingency plans, he said.
Zheng said the country's earthquake preparedness and disaster relief efforts should serve public security and national strategies, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and building of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, all of which include development of city clusters.
This year, to help with the Belt and Road Initiative — an infrastructure and trade network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes — Zheng's agency will help Nepal and Laos build seismic stations and begin construction of the China-ASEAN Earthquake and Tsunami Monitoring and Early Warning System.
