WRITTEN QUESTION E-0799/01

by Ioannis Marínos (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(19 March 2001)

Subject: Accurate earthquake forecast

On 24 June 1999 the Commission announced on the Internet that Prenlab, which was developed by the University of Edinburgh and receives EU funding, had accurately predicted an earthquake in Iceland measuring five on the Richter Scale. On 27 and 29 October 1998 Prenlab notified the

Icelandic authorities that an earthquake would strike Iceland and then on 10 November it predicted the exact size of the earthquake. Three days later the earthquake struck only two kilometres from the point where the station tracking the earthquake was situated.

Will the Commission say whether the EU is making full use of the expertise of Prenlab so that human lives and property can be saved in future? Has Prenlab made any further forecasts since then? Has EU financial support continued since 1998, and what has been the total amount of this aid? Have the authorities of any Member State of the Union asked to use Prenlab's expertise and research findings? Finally, have any other research centres worldwide made any accurate forecasts of earthquakes since 1998?

Answer given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(21 June 2001)

Prenlab (Earthquake-prediction Research in a Natural Laboratory) was a Seismic Hazard Research Project funded under the Fourth framework programme (1994-1998) with a Community contribution of 790 000. The European Commission continued funding the Research through a further project (Prenlab-2) with a Community contribution of 1 162 000, and more recently SM-Site (Developing Stress Monitoring Sites and Infrastructure for Forecasting Earthquakes), an infrastructure project under the Fifth framework programme (1998-2002), with a Community contribution of 1 300 000. The scientific teams involved in Prenlab presented their results to European and Japanese peer scientists during the Community-Japan workshops on Seismic Risk held in Reykjavik, Iceland, in June 1999 and Kyoto, Japan, in March 2000.

Since the earthquake of November 1998, Prenlab has made no further official forecast. The Community continues to fund research and development carried out by this team through the SM-Site infrastructure project, with a view to obtaining future positive results. The final report of this project, presenting the final scientific results obtained, was only made available to the Commission during beginning of 2001 and, until now, no specific request has been made by any Member State to use Prenlab's expertise and research findings. One of the most important results are the new methods for monitoring crustal processes leading to large earthquakes. Despite these promising results the validity and applicability of such forecast is being still debated in the scientific community.

Since 1998, no other research centers have made accurate short-term forecasts, but many teams worldwide prepare medium to long term forecast of seismic hazard mainly for seismic design purposes.

Prenlab will also be presented and reviewed at two important upcoming events:

- The DMSG meeting (Disaster Management Support Group of the committee for earth observation satellites) to be held in Brussels from 25-27 June 2001.

- The scientific review workshop of Community coordinators scheduled from 5-7 September 2001.