Mexico City seismic alert system

The Valley of Mexico suffers the effects of the seismic activity generated by the subduction of the Cocos Plate under the North American Plate. Major earthquakes (M>7) have caused severe damages to Mexico City like the one of September 19, 1985. The occurrence probability of an earthquake M>7 before the year 2000 is very high. For this reason and taking advantage of the radio wave velocity, a real time Seismic Alert System (SAS) for Mexico City, capable of announcing 60 sec before the arrival of earthquakes from the Guerrero Coast has been developed. This system has distributed the detection process and magnitude estimation in each field station in order to reduce costs and improve computer efficiency (AU)