New app MyShake can detect earthquakes

“The denser the network, the earlier you can detect the quake”.

The scientists who made this app are from the University of California at Berkeley and Deutsche Telekom AG.

New smartphone app developed to warn people ahead of approaching earthquakes.

“We can use that data to understand the physics of the process beneath us, how the buildings around us respond to these earthquakes, and we will have more data than we have from the traditional seismic networks”, Allen says in a video introducing the app. This app runs on all types of smartphone’s and it uses the motion sensor to notify the upcoming earthquakes to the user. Fitness trackers, such as pedometer apps, also use these sensors. Only when the app determines that the vibration is from a quake does it briefly activate the phone’s Global Positioning System to obtain the phone’s position and push a short packet of information out through a data or wifi connection.

Thus, Allen goes on to say: “The question is, ‘Are we ready?'” in regards to seismic warning while at an natural disaster summit at the White House, a few weeks ago.

Once the app has proven reliable, quake detection could trigger an alert to cellphone users outside ground zero, providing users with a countdown until shaking arrives. The problem is that Shake Alert costs $16 million a year to operate and the federal government is only footing half of that. Smartphone accelerometers can easily measure earthquakes within a ten-kilometer (6.2-mile) distance, provided that they register a magnitude of over 5. With that said, the idea is to collect data from multiple phone users, making it easier to isolate such false positives.

Allen said the target is 40 seconds of lead time.

In simulated tests based on real earthquakes, MyShake was able to provide timely early warning as well as or better than ShakeAlert.

Here in California, seismologists and other researchers have been hard at work developing an natural disaster warning system that would give residents a brief heads-up to prepare for an impending quake. The study was published Friday in Science Advances.

There are already indications that the approach is valuable to scientists.

MyShake effectively turns your smartphone into a pocket-sized seismometer.

If the phone’s accelerometer lacks makes a clear and present danger of inaccuracy, it can always find safety in numbers.

This app is a savior of lives for countries that are very much prone to earthquakes.

This story is for research purposes only.

“Add the cellphone system into the hard wired system”, said Vidale.

People need not worry anymore in detecting incoming earthquakes. To make up for this, however, the sheer volume of smartphones spread across the globe helps send over fairly accurate results.