Performance of an early warning system: The PRESTo software case

This work was carried out within the 2015 ART-IT project (Early Earthquake Alert in ITaly). Its main purpose is to investigate the performance and the critical issues of an early warning system with particular reference to the PRESTo system (PRobabilistic and Evolutionary early warning SysTem, [Iannacone et al., 2010; Satriano et al., 2011]) whose use has been tested in the framework of the above mentioned project. The correct operation of an early warning system can effectively guarantee a more effective management of a seismic emergency from the first seconds after the occurrence of a strong earthquake, allowing quick actions to reduce exposure and seismic risk. The work was substantially subdivided into two main steps. A first calibration phase, carried out in the first part of the project and aimed to identify the best values of the software configuration parameters in terms of event triggering and declaration. Once the values of the aforementioned parameters have been identified, the second phase of the work was focused on testing the software in real time configuration, on a test site area and the subsequent evaluation of its performance in terms of declaration and localization capacity. This work focuses mainly on the second part of the experimentation and is aimed describing and summarizing the analysis carried out to evaluate the response of the PRESTo software ( and in general of an early warning system) after one year of experimentation and acquisition and highlight any problems and critical issues of the software and more generally of the rapid alert systems.