Rapidly evolving floods are a major and growing hazard worldwide. Currently, their onset and evolution is hard to identify using existing systems. However, seismic sensors already in place to detect earthquakes could be a solution to this problem.
October 13, 2022
Rapidly evolving floods are a major and growing hazard worldwide. Currently, their onset and evolution is hard to identify using existing systems. However, seismic sensors already in place to detect earthquakes could be a solution to this problem.
Researchers led by the University of Göttingen show that a seismometer can sense a flood, such as the devastating one that hit Germany in July 2021, up to 1.5 km away. This could act as an early warning to save lives and lessen damage. They also found that being able to measure the „seismic footprint“ of the flood provides information on its magnitude, velocity and trajectory in real time, which could be used for future flood protection. The results were published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Seismic stations not only sense ground shaking due to earthquakes but also signals emitted at the surface of our planet, such as explosions, landslides, storms and—as the researchers discovered—also floods. For this research, scientists turned an existing earthquake seismometer station near the town of Ahrweiler into a flood detection and tracking tool.
