Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec 21 /Dec 20/
The Azerbaijan Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences which monitors earthquakes has been given a grant approved by the European Union, director of the Regional Academy of Information Technology (RITA) Tofig Babayev told Trend.
"The project was supported by three other countries, Canada, USA and Greece and the decision of the governing board of the Ukrainian Scientific-Technological Centre and a European Union grant amounting to 36 617 euros was awarded," Mr Babayev said.
The project aims to identify the origin of abnormal seismic processes that precede earthquakes.
"The European Union has recognised the project proposed by the Institute of Cybernetics.
The money will be spent on creating a database and the development and refinement of software tools that will determine the location and magnitude of earthquakes," Mr Babayev said.
The Institute of Cybernetics is completing the construction of a station with an earthquake monitoring system in the Siyazan and Naftalan regions. The Institute has currently commissioned two stations that are located on Gum Adasi and in the city of Shirvan.
Dormant oil wells of State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) are used for capturing the analysis of seismic movements. The monitoring system is based on the analysis of noise that can warn of earthquakes from five to 20 hours ahead of a quake, in a radius of 300-400 kilometres.
Experiments conducted on the island of Gum and the Shirvan region, showed that the new stations are able to fix the abnormal seismic processes for 15-20 hours before the standard seismic stations.