Regional earthquake response
In the first minutes after a major earthquake, emergency managers must direct crews and decide whether key buildings can be safely occupied, all while inspections are still hours away. A dense regional network gives them measured evidence to act on.
When a significant earthquake hits, the people running the response have to make big calls straight away. Which communities took the worst of it. Where to send limited crews first. And whether the key emergency buildings the response itself depends on, hospitals, Emergency Operations Centres and control buildings, are safe to occupy or have to be evacuated. The information that would answer those questions, how hard the ground actually shook, street by street, is usually not there.
Without measured shaking, the fallback is visual inspection and engineering assessment, building by building. That is the right tool for a definitive answer, but it takes hours to days, and a response has to act in minutes. A dense regional network closes that gap. It turns the most chaotic early hours into a high-resolution map of where the strongest shaking landed, so triage starts on evidence rather than assumption, and resources go to the worst-affected communities first.
Building-specific monitoring is the gold standard, and a dense regional network is what makes the whole region legible fast. You do not choose between them. You phase them in.
The buildings you cannot lose. The definitive answer on a critical structure comes from instrumenting that structure. Measure what a hospital, an EOC, a control building or a key bridge actually experienced, and get a clear safe-to-occupy-and-operate call in minutes. Start with the assets the region cannot afford to have sitting idle or unsafe.
The regional picture. Around those anchor sites, a network of free-field and structural instruments builds a high-resolution view of shaking across the region. The more points, the sharper the map, and the better you can direct resources and give owners, engineers and the public timely, evidence-based guidance.
Phased, not all at once. Instrument the critical buildings and the EOC first, then densify the regional network over time as budget allows. Every instrument added sharpens the picture, and nothing you install early is wasted later.
Right-sized instruments. Dense coverage on affordable EQR-90s, research-grade EQR-120s where the science demands it, brought together where it helps on the EQR-C. One family, one accountable team.
The network feeds your own systems, not a vendor's locked platform. Measured shaking flows in standard formats over an open API and SeedLink, straight into your EOC dashboards, GIS and the national feeds you already use. No per-seat licence to read your region's own data, and a 90-day full-fidelity record so nothing is lost when it matters most.
A standing regional network is more than a response tool. Over time it records how different events, near and far, shallow and deep, affect different building types and ground conditions across the region. That growing evidence base deepens local understanding of seismic risk and sharpens the models that guide design, retrofit and planning.
A dense, precisely timed network is also what powers earthquake early warning. The same instruments that map an event afterwards detect it as it begins and provide critical seconds of advance notice, enough to trigger automated protective actions. Sentinel™ already runs nationwide earthquake early warning across New Zealand on exactly this kind of network.
Canterbury Seismic has designed, built and supported seismic networks for more than two decades, including instruments behind New Zealand's national monitoring, and gear that captured strong ground motion through a major earthquake sequence. The same instruments, delivered and supported by the team that makes them, scaled from a single building to a region.
Tell us the region, the buildings you cannot afford to lose and the decisions your EOC has to make. We will scope a network you can start now and grow over time.
A denser, region-specific and higher-resolution picture of shaking, wired straight into your own EOC systems. National networks give a broad baseline; a regional network tells you how hard it shook in your communities, block by block, in minutes.
Minutes. You get a measured map of where the shaking was worst while visual inspection and engineering assessment, which take hours to days, are only just beginning.
Yes. Instrument the critical buildings and the EOC first, then densify the regional network over time. Every instrument added sharpens the picture, and early installs stay useful.
They are two layers of the same system. Building-specific monitoring is the gold standard for a definitive safe-to-occupy-and-operate answer on a key structure. The regional network gives the fast, wide triage picture around it. Most programmes use both.
A dense, precisely timed network is the foundation for it. Earthquake early warning is an emerging capability that provides critical advance notice and can trigger automated protective actions. This is the kind of network it is built on.
Regional councils, Civil Defence and CDEM groups, lifelines groups, EOC and ECC teams, research institutions, and owners with buildings across a region.
