Earthquakes cannot be stopped but their impact can certainly be lessened. Matters would be still bettrer if the tremors can be forecast, assert scientists. But, unfortunately, they say, rather than working towards this goal, the application of science has been limited to measuring the intensity of the quakes. The country's first quake forecasting observatory in Ghuttu Dhopaddhar here could have given some indications at least about the disaster in neighbouring Nepal.
From Nepal to India, everyone is asking the question, can quakes not be forecastIJ To seek answer to such questions, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology had set up a Multi-Parametric Geophysical Observatory (MPGO) in Ghuttu Dhopaddhar in 2005. The MPGO became fully operational in April 2007.
It has eight types of parameters to predict the earthquakes, equipped as it is with super conducting gravimeter, overhauser magnetometer, tri-axial fluxgate magnetometer, UlF band search coil magnetometer, radon data logger, water level recorders. Again, it is backed by the dense network of Broad Band Seismometers (BBS) and GPS.
However, the isolation of weak earthquake precursory signal further requires characterisation of time variability related to environmental, hydrological, tectonic and even inter-planetary processes, affecting differently each geophysical time series. However, the data derived by these techniques has not been analysed, turning these machines worth crores into mere white elephants.
So far, over Rs 25 crore has been spent in the observatory in installing the forecasting techniques. But still, the eight parameters are not yet able to provide the ''real time'' data.
The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) Hyderabad has, however, begun the work of converting the data into “real time data”. Now, it is being hoped that the scientists would be able to predict the earthquake in the future.
