Google has transformed 2 billion smartphones into a global earthquake alert system

A new study reveals that Google has exploited motion sensors on more. Meanwhile, than 2 billion smartphones to create an early alert system for earthquakes as effective as standard seismometers.

Between 2021. Therefore, 2024, the company’s Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system captured more than 11,000 earthquakes thanks to smartphones accelery and emitted more than 1,200 Android user alerts in 98 countries.

This system made it possible to multiply by ten the number of people with access to seismic alerts. For example, going from 250 million in 2019 to 2.5 billion today. However, The researchers published their results on July 17 in the journal Science.

“Earthquakes are a constant threat to communities around the world. Moreover, Although we have become good for knowing where they are likely to strike. Consequently, we are always faced with devastating consequences when they do it, “wrote the representatives of google transformed 2 billion smartphones Google in a press release.” And if we could give people a few seconds of warning before the tremors begin? These seconds can be enough to descend from a scale, get away from dangerous objects.

In recent decades. seismic alert systems have been deployed in countries such as China, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and the United States. However. these systems, built using seismic stations as a nodes, are expensive, which means that most countries subject to earthquakes have only regional coverage and that many others have none.

To fill this cover gap. Google researchers have designed the AEA system to use smartphones and smart watches accelerometers to detect P waves moving quickly, which generally precede the most destructive waves during an earthquake. Using this network of sensors. AEA can estimate the size of an earthquake and the place where it will strike, then send warnings to users in the danger zone.

The researchers google transformed 2 billion smartphones have faced many challenges. The accelerometers of the phones are much less precise than the seismometers. so that the team has gathered data from the omnipresence of Android devices and their default recording of movement data.

To transform these signals grouped into significant warnings. they had to take into account the differences between the devices and regional variations in geology and the disposition of buildings.

Now operating in several countries, including Greece, Turkey, the United States, Japan and Indonesia, AEA had issued 1,279 alerts in March 2024.

Users’ comments reveal that 85 % of people who experienced an earthquake received an alert. 36 % received one before the jerks start, 28 % for and 23 % after.

Only three of the alerts were false. two having been triggered by thunderstorms and another by a mass notification event unrelated to it which vibrated a certain number of phones.

But problems remain, in particular to estimate the google transformed 2 billion smartphones extent of large earthquakes, such as those who hit Turkey in February 2023. These tremors were considerably underestimated by AEA. which researchers have attributed to flaws in algorithms and collection methods they have since updated.

Events like this raise questions about the fact that a rescue software is held. operated by a technology giant, but Google insists that its technology will only “complete official alert systems” instead of replacing them.

“The AEA shows that smartphones distributed worldwide can be used to detect earthquakes. emit large -scale alerts with efficiency comparable to established national systems,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Large earthquakes are the most important. difficult for all early alert systems for earthquakes, and the global implementation of AEA supports efforts to improve detection through rapid and large -scale data collection and an information return to algorithms. »»