Aug 12, 2020 10:30:00

Google announces technology to build the world's largest earthquake detection network on Android smartphone

Google has announced that it has developed technology to build the world's largest earthquake detection network using Android smartphones. With this technology, it is possible to build an earthquake detection network that detects and predicts earthquakes with only smartphone functions without installing an application and sends a warning to each smartphone before a large shake arrives.

Earthquake detection and early alerts, now on your Android phone

https://blog.google/products/android/earthquake-detection-and-alerts/

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the average economic loss in the United States due to an earthquake is $ 6.1 billion annually (about 640 billion yen), 61% of which occurs in California on the west coast of the United States That. In addition, there is a 99.7% probability that an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or more will occur in California by 2050, and there will be a 10% chance that a large earthquake of magnitude 8-9 will occur in 2050 in Washington and Oregon in the northwestern United States. It is believed to occur.

Google, in cooperation with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the California Emergency Services Office, has built the world's largest earthquake detection network by making California Android devices part of the earthquake detection system ' ShakeAlert ' He said.

There are roughly two types of waves that an earthquake causes,

P waves and S waves . According to Google, almost all Android smartphones have built-in accelerometers that can detect the first P wave. When the Android smartphone detects a tremor that seems to be the initial tremor of an earthquake, a signal is sent to Shake Alert's server along with the approximate location of the tremor.

The system grasps whether or not an earthquake is actually occurring based on the signals from a large number of Android smartphones that are aggregated on the server. After that, it is a mechanism to send an earthquake warning to the smartphone. It takes about a few seconds to tens of seconds after the alarm reaches the smartphone until the main shock comes, Google says, ``We are essentially competing with the earthquake at a speed of light that is much faster than the speed at which the earthquake propagates.'' States.

Also in the earthquake there are many in Japan, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency earthquake early warning is sending alarm to the smartphone before the S wave to be the second wave in the system is reached, all of the seismometers and seismic intensity meter to be used in this earthquake early warning system The purpose of ShakeAlert and Google is to improve the scale and accuracy of the earthquake detection network by replacing it with a smartphone.

There has already been an attempt to make a smartphone an earthquake detection network, and in 2016 a system called 'MyShake' was announced, but this required installing a dedicated application on the smartphone.

``MyShake'' application that uses smartphones as a global earthquake detection and notification network-GIGAZINE

The big advantage of Shake Alert support is that you don't need to install a separate application. Any device with Android version 5.0 or later is supported, and more than 2.5 billion smartphones worldwide can be integrated into the ShakeAlert network. The earthquake detection network using Android smartphones and Shake Alert has undergone a full-scale operational test in California only from October 2019, Google said, ``By 2021, Android smartphone functions in regions other than California We hope that an earthquake warning system using will be built.'