震災向來是台灣的主要天災之一，降低震災帶來的生命財產損失也一直是人們努力的目標，然而人類目前在科學技術上未能準確預測地震會何時發生，因此產生地震預警(Earthquake Early Warning, EEW)的概念與研究：當地震發生時，盡快偵測到並估算地震資訊，將預警警報發送至全國各地，讓人們能做好地震即將來襲的應對準備，間接降低震災造成的財物損失與人員傷亡。
本文建立了一個地震預警系統，使用測站數量超過400個、佈置於台灣各地的Palert地震網，相當於一個高密度的地震感測網路，收集測站的感測資料並使用STA/LTA觸發器用來偵測地震初達波P波的到達，當偵測到地震事件後並對震源位置進行定位。有別於地面上的一般定位，地震震源定位是一個三維空間的定位問題，而且地震波在地殼內的傳遞速度並非等速而會隨著地形、地質、深度等因素而不同，本文利用不同測站有著不同的P波到達時間此一特性，使用理論到時差與觀測到時差設計一個等時差吻合度模型，並以經度、緯度、深度三個不同維度將地形切割成一個三維虛擬網格，虛擬網格中的最小單位稱為細胞，任意一個細胞皆可套入等時差吻合度模型並得到一個吻合度數值，此數值相對越高代表越吻合目前的已知條件。換句話說吻合度最高的細胞即是震源位置，對於如何找到吻合度最高的細胞，提出相鄰搜尋法的演算法。在實驗中，搜集2013年全年發生在台灣本島與沿海，芮氏規模超過4.0以上的地震感測記錄，並以窮舉搜尋法、尺度收縮搜尋法及Geiger定位法做為比較對象，從結果來看，相鄰搜尋法有著計算速度快、定位準確及定位結果穩定的優點，證明可實際運用於地震預警及地震防災上。

Earthquakes have always been a major disaster in Taiwan, but due to our inability to accurately predict the occurrence of an earthquake, the concept and study of EEW (Earthquake Early Warning) emerged: when an earthquake occurs, if we can detect it and estimate its properties as soon as possible, we can send out warnings and let people prepare for the incoming disaster, indirectly reduces the damage of properties and losses of lives from an earthquake.
This study created a novel EEW system utilizing the Palert network, a high density sensor network consisting of over 400 detection sites deployed across Taiwan. When we detect the first arrival wave with the STA/LTA triggers, we can determine whether an earthquake have occurred and locate the hypocenter. Unlike traditional locating problems, the position of the hypocenter is 3-dimensional. Thus, we created a scoring model that takes advantage of the different P-wave arrival time between detection sites, then divide the terrain into a 3-dimensional virtual grid based on longitude, latitude and depth. The virtual grid is composed of various cells, with each cell having a score under the scoring model. The higher the score, the more the cell fits into the known parameters of the hypocenter. In other words, the highest-scoring cell is the hypocenter, and we purpose a neighborhood method for finding this cell. In our experiments, we gathered every earthquakes occurred on 2013 in Taiwan or the surrounding sea with a magnitude greater than ML4.0, and we compare our method to an exhaustive method, a downscaling method and Geiger's method. From the results, our neighborhood method has the advantages of high speed, accurate location and stable results, proving that our method can be readily applied to EEW and disaster prevention.

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