The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) recently presented the results of modeling earthquakes and tsunamis that could occur in East Java. The southern coast of the province is prone to an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.7 and a tsunami wave reaching up to 29 meters. The earthquake and tsunami potentials calculated by BMKG are based on data and the history of earthquakes on the southern coast of Java.
BMKG released the results of the earthquake potential modeling. Meanwhile, UGM lecturer Professor Sunarno took steps to install ten earthquake monitoring stations along the coast of the island of Java to predict earthquakes three days before the incident so that disaster mitigation can be carried out.
“We are making about ten models of the EWS Earthquake monitoring station. We will install them along the southern side of Java Island for the development of the earthquake epicenter triangulation algorithm,” said Sunarno on Monday (7/6).
According to Sunarno, EWS could predict not only earthquake events but also the location of the epicenter. “EWS can predict an earthquake 3 days before it happens and can also take into account the epicenter of the earthquake,” he explained.
Sunarno explained that EWS is still in the development stage apart from technology improvement and algorithm development to determine the epicenter of the upcoming earthquake. “Each EWS station we installed measures changes in well water levels every 5 minutes and exposure to natural Radon gas,” he said.
However, until now the sensitivity of EWS can only monitor earthquake events above 4.5 SR between Aceh and NTT for the Indo-Australian plate. An EWS station must be installed on the monitored plates for other areas.
EWS consists of several components such as detectors for changes in groundwater and radon gas levels, signal conditioners, controllers, data storage, and power sources. It also takes advantage of the internet of things (IoT) technology. The working mechanism of this tool in predicting earthquakes is based on differences in the concentration of radon gas and groundwater levels which are natural anomalies before the earthquake. When an earthquake will occur on the plate, exposure to natural radon gas from the ground will increase significantly. Likewise, the groundwater level rises and falls significantly.
