Earthquake disaster may be reduced if the information on the arrival and the intensity of principal motion of a large earthquake is announced to the public before its arrival. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has a plan to publicize this kind of information, called the Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) information, in the near future. Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has studied on the application of this information to an earthquake quick alarm system for railways. As a result, a new alarm system using the EEW information has been developed for a private railway. When this system will receive the EEW information and judge the earthquake to be dangerous for the railway, it will give the alarm to the running trains by train radio automatically.

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