Orange County Register

EARLY WARNING: UCI researcher Pai Chou holds one of the earthquake sensors that will be placed in Newport Beach. Image by Daniel A. Anderson, UCI.

UC Irvine plans to place compact disc-sized sensors on water pipes in Newport Beach to see if they can quickly identify where and when breaks  occur in the event of a damaging earthquake.

The experiment, underwritten by a $5.7 million grant, is meant to help emergency responders rapidly restore service and make sure there’s enough water to battle one of the potentially most dangerous after effects of a quake — fire.

Seismologists have said that broken gas pipelines could start scores of fires in Orange and Los Angeles counties following a catastrophic quake.

The first sensors will be placed on water pipes in a one-mile square area between Hoag Hospital and Upper Newport Bay, says Pai Chou, an engineer and computer scientist who is conducting the project with renowned UCI engineer Masanobu Shinozuka. The project area is situated along the Newport-Inglewood fault, and might eventually be expanded to an area 10 miles square.

The initial testing is meant provide information to emergency responders. But Chou (pronounced chew) said by email that, “The ultimate goal is to make such a public alert system similar to real-time traffic maps.  The emphasis of this work is to collect the data and perform the data analysis necessary (on the back end) to enable the public alert system to be built in the first place (on the front end).”

The sensors, similar to ones UCI has placed on the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles Harbor, “will detect vibration and sound changes that could indicate pipe problems,” UCI says. “Through antennae, the sensors will relay information wirelessly over long distances to a central location for recording, processing and diagnostic analysis…

“Using existing pipe networks, the team will then test and calibrate the sensors by simulating and monitoring pressure changes equivalent to those arising from actual pipe damage.”

Chou says, ” What we want to do is to make an optimized system so that they will perform well, consume low power, and be low cost — which is important if you want to deploy many units across the entire country if not all over the world.  If successful, then we’ll be able to track down damages to freshwater or wastewater pipes as soon as they occur.  Better yet, if damaged pipes can be detected early and repaired then it can potentially save a lot of cost.”

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