Four decades after the first deployment of digital seismographs, it is now commonplace to have continuous seismic waveform data available in real- and near-real time from dense seismic arrays that target many of active volcanic and tectonic regions worldwide. The data is recorded using very broadband sensors with high dynamic range which are digitally telemetered to processing hubs with minimum latency, and signals are evaluated using automatic or semi-automatic procedures. Recent years have also seen rapid progress on providing real time ground motion streams from high rate GNSS stations.

Providing rapid and reliable information on earthquake source parameters and the consequent predicted or observed ground shaking, as soon as possible following the initiation of potentially damaging events, is nowadays an increasingly urgent societal demand, as a consequence of the increased exposure and vulnerability of highly populated urban settlements and infrastructure complexity.

Real time earthquake information systems consist of complex software and hardware capable of acquiring, processing and interpreting seismic and other e.g. GPS data within a well defined timeframe that is related to the earthquake phenomena or interest and to the characteristics of the monitoring network. The time scale involved in real time seismology spans from seconds for early warning, minutes for ground motion mapping systems, and up to hours for large scale, global earthquake and tsunami warning networks.

This symposium is open to researchers in the field of real time seismology who intend to contribute with new methodological/experimental developments and examples of application both for the fast estimation of earthquake source parameters (location, magnitude, mechanism, rupture size and orientation, slip distribution, …) and the rapid assessment of the potential damage for an earthquake through reliable ground motion estimation. Contributions on analyses and methods applied to monitor the earthquake phenomena using multi-disciplinary real-time data sets are especially welcome.