New app to turn smartphones into seismic network

As yet there's no iPhone version but could be if there's enough interest in the Android version. A team of researchers have come up with an app for phones that run on Android - with one for iOS to come - that can help detect earthquakes. That saves battery power, because rather than the app sending out a constant stream of data and letting researchers back in the lab filter out what motion might be an natural disaster, that filtering happens in the phone.

Paired with Global Positioning System capabilities installed in nearly every (if not each and every) smartphone, the app is able to locate exactly where any disruptive rumblings due to shifting tectonic plates or fault lines are occurring, and then subsequently sends the data over to Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory, where it can be analyzed to ensure that proper preventative actions can be taken.

At first glance, the idea would appear to leapfrog current efforts to test a workable warning system for earthquakes in California, but the app doesn't yet turn that information around to provide personal warnings prior to the shaking.

"The more people who download, the more quickly we'll get to the point where we could use it", he urges. The researchers have developed an algorithm that will attempt to separate earthquakes from everyday motion and jostling.

A West Coast early warning system got a big boost in this year's federal budget when $8.2 million was appropriated to help the U.S.G.S. create such a system in conjunction with UC Berkeley, the universities of Washington and OR and Caltech.

"There are hardly any conventional seismic stations in the region there, " Allen said, "but a network of mobile phones in full operation would have detected that quake and, based on its distance from the capital, the network would have provided 20 seconds of early warning that could have saved many lives". Earthquake-prone countries in the developing world with poor ground-based seismic network or early warning systems include Nepal, Peru, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Iran, he said. When a magnitude 6 quake shook the Napa Valley in August 2014, people testing the PC-based ShakeAlert system in Berkeley got about eight seconds' warning to duck and cover. However, he noted that the application has not yet experienced a real quake. And to be clear, enrolled phones will not be receiving alerts of earthquakes - not yet.

The goal, says the university, is to build a worldwide seismic network. "In most cases these phones can only detect very strong parts of shaking, not the early portion of the wave", Kong says.

But ultimately the idea is that recruited phones will be part of a network that not only gathers data but also issues alerts. It's also enough time for automated trains to slow or stop, for elevators to go to the nearest floor to avoid trapping riders and for sensitive data servers to protect valuable information.

Once the app has proven reliable, natural disaster detection could trigger an alert to cellphone users outside ground zero, providing users with a countdown until shaking arrives. If you're in an area with a documented history of famous earthquakes, (say, San Francisco) you can see what the effects of famous quakes were at your exact position.

With a dense enough network, detection, analysis and warning can take less than a second.

Young-Woo Kwon of Utah State University is also a co-author of the paper.

Source: New app to turn smartphones into seismic network