India-led project to predict earthquake

Scientists, Geophysicists, and Seismologists of 27 countries are working under India's leadership on an ambitious project to develop early warning system for earthquakes to predict them some seconds before they occur.

This was stated by Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences of India Dr Shailesh Nayak at a summit on 'Combating Earthquake Disasters' in Kolkata on Tuesday evening.

He, said, if the effort is successful and the model is developed, we could reduce the number of human casualties substantially.

Nepal, India and Bangladesh had recently been hit by devastating quakes and after shocks, the worst-hit being the Himalayan country where close to 10,000 people perished.

Nayak, according to an official statement issued here, said, before earthquakes, some chemical changes under the earth's surface and some physical displacements on the surface occur and hoped if parameters are developed to observe, study and analyze these changes, quakes can be predicted.

For this purpose, India is going to launch a satellite by 2019 which will send images of surface displacement up to the accuracy of a few centimeters, he said.