One hundred new earthquake warning systems are to be installed across Guangdong Province by 2016, which will bring the province’s earthquake warning system up to first world standards. The entire project will cost 158 million yuan, Nanfang Daily reports.

Over the past century, Guangdong and its adjacent waters have seen 12 earthquakes that measured at least 6 on the Richter scale.

This project is the result of “Pearl River Delta Earthquake Reduction Agreement,” which the China Seismological Bureau and the provincial government signed in late 2011.

The stations, also known as seismic stations, will have different types of seismic instruments that can record earthquake waves traveling trough the interior of the earth and its surface. They will be located 15 km apart and each will be able to report seismic activity within 10 seconds of it starting.

According to Nanfangwang, southeast China can be divided into seven seismic activity zones, five of which are wholly or partly in Guangdong.

These include Nan’ao-Nanpeng, at which there were was an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale in 1600 and another in 1918 measuring 7.5. The latter wiped out 80% of the local population.

There is also Heyuan-Shaowu, at which there was an earthquake in 1962 measuring 6.1 that killed 85 people.

The Lianhua Mountain seismic area, which stretches from Shenzhen’s coast to central Fujian, has seen five earthquakes.

The biggest earthquakes in western Guangdong were one in Dianbai in 1611 that measured 6.0 and one in Yangjiang in 1969 that measured 6.4. The 1969 quake killed 32 people and destroyed 30,000 houses.

In February this year, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake in Heyuan could be felt in the metropolises of the Pearl River Delta.