Reinforcement of seafloor surveillance infrastructure for earthquake and Tsunami monitoring in western Japan

The pacific coast of western Japan is one of the highest concern regions of mega-thrust earthquake outbreak at this moment. Reinforcement of surveillance system surrounding the hypo-central region in seafloor is essential to understanding the local seismicity and forecasting early warning information of seismic and associate tsunami event. A research and development project to realize the integrated management of large number of real-time seafloor observatories for earthquake and tsunami (named DONET) was planned and undertook from 2006. The DONET was designed and constructed to cover the hypo-central region of Tonankai earthquake and changeover to a normal operation mode from 2011. In addition to the operation of the DONET, the development of a new observatory network (DONET2) was started from 2010 to target to observe the hypo-central region of Nankai earthquake where is located the west of hypo-central region of Tonankai earthquake. This system aims to come into complete operation from 2015 and the surveillance network which fully covering western Japan will be maintained by this introduction.