Earthquake Detection is Becoming a Reality
Crowdsourced data is being used to detect earthquakes around the world.
Being able to detect an earthquake before it happens is the ultimate goal for seismologists around the world. Now, thanks to cellphone technology and some good old crowdsourcing that goal becoming a reality.
An early warning system
Sometimes the most amazing ideas come from the strangest of partnerships. One would not naturally think to put Google and the United States Geological Survey together, and yet, according to the BBC, the two entities have teamed up to create an earthquake early warning system.
The collaboration between the tech giant and the governmental body has resulted in ShakeAlert, a phone app that can automatically alert its users to an incoming earthquake. The app, according to BBC, gets its data from two sources. The first source is the more than 700 seismometers, machines that detect tremors in the earth- installed throughout the United States by the USGS. The second is user information from Android phones.
All Android phones are equipped with accelerometers which detect when a phone is being moved. They are very sensitive, and can act as little seismometers. When all the data from all the Android users in a given area is combined, the app can figure out when an earthquake is about to happen, and send out an alert via radio waves. Radio waves are quicker than seismic waves.
“We’re essentially racing the speed of light (which is roughly the speed at which signals from a phone travel) against the speed of an earthquake. And lucky for us, the speed of light is much faster!” Marc Stogaitis, a principal software engineer for Android, wrote on a Google blog.
An earthquake alert went out in California on September 12, 2024 when a 4.7 magnitude rattled the LA area. Califonia’s first in the nation early warning system provided advance notice to 425,217 phones, reported ABC News.There were more than 20,000 new downloads of the app in just three hours after the earthquake.
A work in progress
Though the early warning system is very useful, it is not a complete solution. As National Geographic reports, the warning for most people will come only a few seconds before the quake hits, and people close to the origin of the quake will get almost no warning at all.
The other issue is that sometimes it just doesn’t work. At least 55,000 people used Android phones in Syria and Turkey when the horrific earthquake in February of 2023 hit, and most did not get an alert.
Forecasting earthquakes is still a very young field. “Like weather forecasting 100 years ago,” Zhe Jia, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told National Geographic. There is still a long way to go to make forecasting and alerting for earthquakes as good as weather detection is today.
Still, having these systems in place is a step forward. Having even a few seconds’ warning to take shelter in the event of an earthquake can mean the difference between injury and health, life and death. Who knows, maybe one day people will recieve an alert on Monday that an earthquake may occur on Tuesday and thousands of lives could be saved.
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