Here we propose a methodology for Earthquake Early Warning able issuing the alert based on the real-time estimation of the epicentral area where a ground Intensity measure is expected to exceed a user-set ground shaking level. The method provides in output a P-wave-based, time-evolutive “early” shake map. The P-wave displacement, velocity and acceleration amplitudes are jointly measured on a progressively expanded time window while the earthquake location and magnitude are evaluated using data at near source stations. A retrospective analysis of the 2016, Mw 6.5 Central Italy earthquake records shows that the method naturally accounts for effects related to the earthquake rupture directivity and spatial variability of strong ground motion related to source and path and site effects. Five seconds after the origin time the simulated performance of the system in predicting the event impact is very high: in the 40 km-radius area that suffered an Intensity MCS VIII-IX, 41 over 42 strong-motion instrumented sites would have been successfully alerted, with only one false alert. Even considering the 15-km-radius blind-zone, a 15-55 km wide annular area would have received the alert 2-14.5 sec before the occurrence of the strong ground shaking. The proposed EEW method evolves with time in a way that it minimizes the missed alarms while increasing successful alarms and to a lesser extent false alarms, so it is necessary for the end-user to accept these eventualities and account for them in a probabilistic decision scheme depending on the specific safety actuation measure to be undertaken in real-time