The quality of life and infrastructure security are vulnerable more and more to natural disasters caused by geologic (earthquakes, volcanoes etc.), atmospheric, hydrologic or technologic events. In Romania and abroad earthquakes are causing 15 % of the total number of events and 30 % of the total damage. There is a big vulnerability of buildings from Bucharest and other cities, that was observed during the last catastrophic events from 1940 November 10 (Mw =7.4) and 1977 March 4 (Mw=7.2). The World Bank evaluated the damages caused to Bucharest by the 1977 earthquake to about 2.05 billion dollars, amount that represents 2/3 of the total costs of the damages in Romania. During the 1977 earthquake were recorded 1578 deaths, 11300 injured people and 35000 houses destroyed. 480 people died from burns caused by gas fires, since after the earthquake the gas was still pumped in the gas pipes of towns. So we can mitigate the damage through rapid and right actions. An earthquake early warning system aims to ensure rapid notification of potential damage effects of a strong earthquake, by using fast and stable algorithms, communication lines and instruments.

In the last two decades a lot of progress was made in the implementation of earthquake early warning systems in different countries Japan, Italy , Taiwan, California, Turkey and finally, Romania. The Romanian EEWS started its development as a common project between NIEP and Karlsruhe University in 2000. It was designed only for Bucharest and allows a lead time (the time interval between the arrival of the damaging waves and alert notification) of 21-28 sec depending of the depths of earthquakes (Vrancea earthquakes occur even at 220 Km depth-ROMPLUS catalogue).

The specific purpose of this project is to develop an innovative EEWS for the entire country for monitoring and sending rapid notifications when strong earthquakes occur in Romania. The aim of this project proposal will be achieved by using a series of objectives that cover the entire project duration:

• Identification of existing data, data collection and storage in a database
• Identification and tune up of rapid detection algorithms for P wave.
• Identification of the best methodology to rapidly estimate earthquake magnitude in the first seconds after detection
• Integration of results in a real-time software that will allow rapid broadcast of notifications to users.