Mobile Computing
Scientists Develop Earthquake Detection App
Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, Deutsche Telekom Silicon Valley Innovation Laboratories and Utah State University
have developed a free Android app that can help detect earthquakes and
may eventually provide an early warning system for smartphone users.
The app, called MyShake,
uses three accelerometers built into smartphones to detect movement
caused by a quake. The app runs in the background and collects and
analyzes information from the accelerometers. If the movement fits the
vibrational profile of an earthquake, the phone sends the information
along with phone's GPS coordinates to the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. For now, the app only collects data, but if enough people
install it and use it, the scientists said they anticipate upgrading it to
include earthquake early-warning capabilities within a year. They also
plan to release an iPhone version of the app.
Although the
accelerometers in smartphones are far less sensitive than in-ground
seismometers, they are sensitive enough to detect earthquakes with a
magnitude of 5 or higher within a 10 kilometer radius, according to a
news release from UC Berkeley. There are also far more smartphones than
in-ground seismometers, so the scientists said they anticipate that the sheer
volume of data will more than make up for the lack of device
sensitivity.
"MyShake cannot replace traditional seismic networks
like those run by the U.S. Geological Survey, UC Berkeley, the
University of Washington and Caltech, but we think MyShake can make
earthquake early warning faster and more accurate in areas that have a
traditional seismic network, and can provide life-saving early warning
in countries that have no seismic network," said Richard Allen, the
leader of the app project and director of the Berkeley Seismological
Laboratory, in a news release.
The scientists who developed the
app are Qingkai Kong and Richard Allen from UC Berkeley, Louis Schreier
from Silicon Valley Innovation Laboratories and Young-Woo Kwon from
Utah State University. They published a paper about the app in the February 2016 issue of Science Advances.
More information about the MyShake app can be found on UC Berkeley's site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].
