Ctg seismic centre gets modern equipment

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CHITTAGONG, August 10 (bdnews24.com): The seismic centre in Chittagong has got a facelift with modern equipment and sensors to better monitor information on earthquakes, according to officials.
The centre, in the port city's Ambagan, is now connected with three other newly-installed regional centres to monitor any movement in the earth's crust, Arzuman Habib, who oversees the project, told news agency.
It now waits formal commissioning, said Habib, an official of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
The modernisation of the 53-year old centre was a long-pending demand of the seismic experts, and finally it happened last month, the official said.
The centre, which was installed in 1954, could earlier provide information only on the quake's intensity and distance but could not determine the epi-centre and its direction.
Four regional centres, digitally interlinking them through fiber optic and radio communications systems, will now remain directly connected to the centre.
The headquarters of the meteorological department in Dhaka will centrally control the regional centres.
Any of the regional centres recording any quakes now should be able to transmit the information in seconds to the central observatory at Agargaon, Dhaka, which will analyse and disseminate data in minutes.
"Now we're well-equipped to tell people about the nature of an earthquake more effectively so that losses from such a disaster could be minimised," Habib said.
A Chinese company was assigned last year by the Ministry of Defence to implement the project, which also included installation of three new regional observatories in Chittagong, Sylhet and Rangpur.
Habib said they would be able to handover the centres to the meteorological department in couple of months after trial runs.
He said they were already catching quake data using a strong digital network.