Scientists at NASA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have enhanced its GPS technologies to develop new systems how to warn California and elsewhere from earthquakes, tsunamis, and extreme weather condition, according to a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.
The technology was used to demonstrate how it can track summer monsoon rains that affect the Southern California region. The new GPS system uses real-time information to issue more accurate and timely flash flood warnings, the press release said.
Scientists at NASA and Scripps are also integrating the system into real-word scenarios. The new system can assess the degree and impact of damage of natural disasters on hospitals, bridges and other critical infrastructures. The results of the assessment can then be used by emergency personnel, decision-makers and first responders as basis how they can implement public safety procedures.
For example, hospitals will receive immediate and accurate information about quakes to shut down elevators and send alerts to operating room personnel. The same thing goes with detecting changes to the structural integrity of bridges affected by earthquakes.
"These advancements in monitoring are being applied to public safety threats, from tall buildings and bridges to hospitals in regions of risk for natural hazards," said Yehuda Bock of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif. during a media briefing. "Meaningful warnings can save lives when issued within one to two minutes of a destructive earthquake, several tens of minutes for tsunamis, possibly an hour or more for flash floods, and several days or more for extreme winter storms."
The technology has combined GPS, accelerometer, pressure, and temperature to collect real-time data throughout Southern California. Hundreds of scientific-grade GPS stations are constantly receiving signals from GPS satellites to determine their precise positions throughout Southern California.
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