[1] 17 August (Mw 7.4) and 12 November 1999 (Mw 7.2) earthquakes have caused major concern about future earthquake occurrences in Istanbul and in the Marmara Region. Stress transfer studies and renewal model type probabilistic investigations indicate about 2% annual probability for a M w = 7+ earthquake in the Marmara Sea. As part of the preparations for the expected earthquake in Istanbul, an early warning system has been established in 2002. A simple and robust algorithm, based on the exceedance of specified threshold time domain amplitude and the cumulative absolute velocity (CAV) levels, is implemented for this system. Rational threshold levels related to new bracketed CAV window approach (BCAV-W) are determined, based on dataset of strong ground motion records with fault distances of less than 100 km, as 0.2 m/s, 0.4 m/s and 0.7 m/s related to three alarm levels which will be incorporated in the Istanbul earthquake early warning system. Citation: Alcik, H., O. Ozel, N. Apaydin, and M. Erdik (2009), A study on warning algorithms for Istanbul earthquake early warning system, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L00B05,

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Considering the number of endangered museums in Istanbul and the size of their collections, assessing and mitigating the earthquake risk is an immense task by any standard. This paper provides a status report on the current earthquake risk mitigation efforts taken by the museums in Turkey. It summarizes several projects that have been carried out over the past few years to protect museums and its collections from earthquake damage and defines future actions that would mitigate earthquake risks associated with museum buildings and their contents.