An earthquake gives you mere seconds of warning. A Roorkee company is building the sensors that will act as the first responders

A new company based in Roorkee, India, is developing earthquake early warning systems to act as first responders in case of seismic events. Founded in September 2020 as a spin-off from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, the company is led by M L Sharma, B K Kaushik, and Govind Rathore. Their goal is to create seismic instrumentation and disaster warning systems that can detect and mitigate the effects of earthquakes, reducing damage to infrastructure and potentially saving lives.

The company's flagship product is called BHU WARN, an onsite seismic warning system that uses three sensors and a single data acquisition unit. This system is designed to detect the first wave of an earthquake, which carries little destructive energy and travels the fastest, before the second wave that causes the majority of damage.

By detecting the first wave at the building itself, rather than relying on a regional network, BHU WARN can provide crucial warning time to automatically shut down gas lines, stop trains, or halt nuclear reactors, among other safety measures.

In addition to onsite systems, the company offers smaller devices such as seismic switches for homes and offices that automatically cut power or gas when shaking reaches a certain threshold. They also provide damage estimation tools to predict the impact of earthquakes on specific structures, as well as consulting services for seismic hazard assessments using both deterministic and probabilistic methods.

These services help design earthquake-resistant structures for dams, nuclear and thermal power plants, bridges, hospitals, and large engineering projects.