The European Alert System (sometimes referred to as the European Alarm System or European Warning System) is an

earthquake warning system An earthquake early warning (EEW) system is a system of accelerometers, seismometers, communication, computers, and alarms that is devised for rapidly notifying adjoining regions of a substantial earthquake once one begins. This is not the same ...

for member states of the

Council of Europe The Council of Europe (CoE; , CdE) is an international organisation with the goal of upholding human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it is Europe's oldest intergovernmental organisation, represe ...

EUR-OPA Major Hazards Agreement The EUR-OPA Major Hazards Agreement is a Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe, set up in 1987 by Resolution (87) 2 of the Committee of Ministers. Its full name is "Co-operation Group for the Prevention of, Protection Against, and Organisati ...

. Seismic alerts are provided by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), an international, non-governmental, and non-profit association based at the Laboratoire de Détection et de Géophysique (LDG) of the French Atomic Energy Commission (

Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, or CEA ( French: Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives), is a French public government-funded research organisation in the areas of energy, defense and sec ...

– CEA) in Bruyères-le-Châtel (

Essonne Essonne () is a department in the southern part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. It is named after the river Essonne. In 2019, it had a population of 1,301,659, across 194 communes.Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

.EMSC History
/ref>

Competence and notification

The EMSC's main area of competence is the following: *west: to the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a Divergent boundary, divergent or constructive Plate tectonics, plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest mountai ...

, north of 30°N *north : to the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

*east: to the

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

and the regions bordering the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

and the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

*south : to the regions bordering the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. The competent region also includes, as far as possible, territories of member states of the

which fall outside these boundaries. The EMSC's Coordination Bureau is responsible for informing the Secretariat of the EUR-OPA Major Hazards Agreement about any major event in the European-Mediterranean region. It disseminates a notification to the Council of Europe less than an hour after an earthquake occurrence with a magnitude larger than 6.0 on the

Richter scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

in any of the states of the

Partial Agreement Partial agreement is a term used within the Council of Europe to refer to a major activity of European cooperation that is organised by the Council of Europe but does not include all of its member states. This form of activity dates from a resoluti ...

, indicating the localization of the epicentre of the seism and its magnitude. The EUR-OPA secretariat undertakes to confirm the data with the affected state(s) and ask for their needs, which if necessary are communicated to other member states. The Council of Europe does not provide

humanitarian aid Humanitarian aid is material and Humanitarian Logistics, logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homelessness, homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. Th ...

itself. This is provided by organisations such as the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

and

UNOCHA The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (UN) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disaster ...

Past alerts

The alert was triggered for 19 events in 2006, notably the 6.7 in

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

on 8 January 2006 and 18 events in the Extreme-Eastern Russia (10 events in the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...

, 5 in the Koryakia region (North of Kamchatka Peninsula) and 3 in or near the

Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

References

External links

Major Hazards Agreement website

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120826024538/http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/1999/0820/99082000069.html , date=26 August 2012
Earthquakes in Europe : National, international and European policy for the prevention and mitigation of seismic disaster, by Fereniki Vatavali, 2003

BBC News « Plan for Quake warning system, 5 June 2008 »

Diagnose the impact of global earthquakes from direct and indirect eyewitnesses contribution
Earthquake early warning systems International organizations based in Europe

Competence and notification

Past alerts

See also

References

External links