Narrator:       This is Science Today. There are just beginning to be active, public early warning systems for earthquakes around the world, including one in Japan. Richard Allen, associate director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, says they're testing an early warning system in the state of California.

Allen:              We're still experimenting with different ways to get the warning to people. You can imagine some sort of more public type warning system, using Internet, using cell phones, using those kinds of communication devices, but also you could have more specialized warning systems to get warnings to more specific, expert users if you'd like, such as chemical factories, hazardous machinery, train systems, where they would actually then take automated action to reduce the impact of earthquakes.

Narrator:       Allen says they're at the end of what was Phase 1 of their project.

Allen:              Phase one of the project was a three year effort to implement several algorithms on the real-time seismic systems in California and see how they performed.

Narrator:       The system successfully predicted a 5.4 magnitude quake seconds before the ground shook. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.