The Real-time Earthquake Information Consortium (REIC) has been contributing to the development of automatic and semi-automatic application systems for utilizing earthquake early warning (EEW) in the Leading Project "Research project for the practical use of Real-time Earthquake Information Network". The project has been promoted by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) during 2003-2007. This system rapidly determines the epicenter location, origin time,

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... and seismic intensity. Results of estimation are issued within several seconds from P-wave arrivals at the nearby stations. At any place of Japan, users can get this information before the arrival of S-wave in areas of sufficiently far from the epicenter and can take proper actions for reduction of disasters. This project is executed by the cooperation of governments, universities, governmental research institutions, and companies. This paper describes the current state of development and several problems to be solved in order to utilize the EEW effectively.