A magnitude 0.5 earthquake in the Yellow Sea about 100 km offshore Shanghai can be captured and detected by the network in 10 seconds, according to local officials.

The digital earthquake monitoring network, the only such system in China, has adopted the most advanced seismological technology. Its command, located in an area 3 km in diameter on a hill in the city's southwestern suburbs, consists of 16 monitoring substations working round the clock to observe the earth crust activity in three directions: east to west, south to north and vertically.

It is hard to distinguish or track marine seismic signals because they weaken as they pass across the ocean and are easily disrupted by other noises. However, experts claim that the digital monitoring system can counteract the noise and give prominence to earthquake signals. This array makes the Shanghai detection system four times more reliable than others used in the past.

Recently, the Shanghai Municipal Government and the China Earthquake Administration spent large sums of money to upgrade the digital network.

Many other places in China have been modeling Shanghai to establish, enlarge or upgrade local earthquake monitoring networks as well.

In 1985, China established the China Digital Seismograph Network composed of 11 digital seismograph stations under a Sino-U.S. cooperation program.

According to a 1987 plan devised by the China Earthquake Administration to popularize the digital seismographic monitoring technology, the country would complete the establishment of its own digital earthquake array in the 1990s.

By 2000, China had set up 47 digital earthquake stations.

Since 1996, China has spent several billion yuan in carrying out the digitalized network project as well as a national digitalized earthquake monitoring array and crust movement observation network. The goal of these projects is to improve earthquake monitoring and prediction, using digital equipment to replace the old analog ones.

The main parts of the projects are: a national digital seismic network, 20 regional digital telemetric seismic networks, 96 sets of portable digital seismographs, 100 national basic earthquake precursor observation stations, 70 regional precursor observation stations in intensified monitoring areas and a national data management center for earthquake precursor data.

The digitalization of the earthquake monitoring work significantly improves China's ability to predict earthquakes and helps people get reliable data in a few seconds.