The earthquake closet: rendering early-warning useful

Early-warning of imminently approaching strong shaking that could have fatal consequences is a research field that has made great progress. However, its potential to save lives has a serious Achilles heel: The time for getting to safety is 5 to 10 s only, in those cities that need warnings most. Occupants of the upper floors cannot get out of their buildings and narrow streets are not a safe place in strong earthquakes. The official advice, to crawl under a table, protects from falling objects only, but not from collapsing buildings. Thus, only about 10 % of a city’s population can benefit from early-warnings, unless they have access to an earthquake protection unit that is strong enough to improve their chances of survival and not being injured by factors of 1,000 to 30,000. The purpose of this paper is to generate discussion on how to use early-warning to improve the safety for occupants of buildings exposed to strong earthquake shaking. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012