Special Feature 1 – Recommendations for Scientific Disaster Risk Reduction Advances in observation systems: Monitoring of Waves on Land and Seafloor (MOWLAS) as the NIED observation network for earthquake, tsunami and volcano

Special Feature 1 – Recommendations for Scientific Disaster Risk Reduction Advances in observation systems:
Monitoring of Waves on Land and Seafloor (MOWLAS) as the NIED observation network for earthquake, tsunami and volcano

As a disaster-prone country, Japan has some of the world’s most advanced systems for observing earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic activity. In 2017, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED) launched a network called Monitoring of Waves on Land and Seafloor (MOWLAS), to integrate observation data from around 2,100 sites nationwide, covering land and sea, and facilitate the efficient sharing of this information with the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and other relevant organizations (Figure 1). An Earthquake Early Warning alert is transmitted immediately after an earthquake strikes and information about the seismic intensity is sent about 90 seconds later. Japan is the only country in the world with this capability.