Now Android Phone Can Detect Earthquake

Google Creating Android Phone Earthquake Alert System

Google is creating a worldwide, Android phone-powered earthquake alert system. The primary a part of that system is rolled out on 11 Aug, 2020. If you decide in, the accelerometer in your Android phone will become one datum for an algorithm designed to detect earthquakes. Eventually, that system will automatically send warnings to people that might be impacted.

It’s a feature made possible through Google’s strengths: the staggering numbers of Android phones round the world and clever use of algorithms on big data. Like its collaboration with Apple on exposure tracing and other Android features like car crash detection and emergency location services, it shows that there are untapped ways in which smartphones might be used for something more important than doomscrolling.

Google is rolling out the system in small stages. First, Google is partnering with the US Geological Survey and therefore the California Office of Emergency Services to send the agencies’ earthquake alerts to Android users therein state. Those alerts are generated by the already-existing ShakeAlert system, which uses data generated by traditional seismometers.

“THE SERVER AGGREGATES DATA FROM MANY PHONES, ALL OF THEM IN ONE AREA, AND DETERMINES IF AN EARTHQUAKE IS OCCURRING OR NOT.”

“It’d be great if there have been just seismometer-based systems everywhere that would detect earthquakes,” says Marc Stogaitis, principle Android programmer at Google. But, he continues, “that’s not really practical and it’s unlikely to possess global coverage because seismometers are extremely expensive. they need to be constantly maintained, you would like tons of them in a neighborhood to actually have an honest earthquake early warning system.”

So the second and third stages of Google’s plan are going to be powered instead by Android phones. the corporate is proceeding fairly cautiously, though. within the second stage, Google will show localized leads to Google searches for earthquakes supported the info it’s detecting from Android phones. the thought there’s that once you feel an earthquake, you’ll attend Google to ascertain if that’s what you felt or not.

Finally, once it’s more confidence within the accuracy of the system, Google will begin actively sending out earthquake warnings to people that sleep in areas where there aren’t seismometer-based warning systems.

Stogaitis says that the knowledge collected as a part of this program is “de-identified” from users which Google only needs “coarse” location information for it to figure . Both the earthquake alerts and therefore the detection system are opt-in, as well. “What we actually need for this is often just these little mini seismometers that are out there,” Stogaitis says. “We don’t got to know anything about the person itself that’s sending it because that doesn’t matter.”

An Android phone can become a “mini seismometer” because it’s an accelerometer — the thing that detects if you’ve rotated it or not. Android’s system uses the info from that sensor to ascertain if the phone is shaking. It only is on when an Android phone is plugged in and not in use, to preserve battery life.

“We found out [Android phones are] sensitive enough to detect earthquake waves. As an earthquake wave goes through, they’re ready to detect them and typically see both key sorts of waves, the P wave and therefore the S wave,” Stogaitis says. “Each phone is in a position to detect that something like an earthquake is occurring , on the other hand you would like an aggregate of phones to understand that needless to say that it’s an earthquake happening.”

The P wave (primary wave) is that the first and fastest wave sent out from the epicenter of an earthquake. The S wave (secondary wave) is slower but are often much bigger. Google’s system is in a position to detect both. “Often people won’t even feel the P wave because it’s just smaller, while the S wave tends to cause tons more damage,” Stogaitis says. “The P wave are often something that tells you to organize for the S wave.”

That data is processed in classic Google fashion: using algorithms on the aggregated data from thousands of phones to work out whether an earthquake is occurring . Where traditional seismometers are expensive and precise, Android phones are cheap and various . Google can use Bayesian filters and other algorithms to show those numbers into earthquake data that’s accurate enough for sending out warning alerts.

Google says its system is capable of locating the epicenter and determining the strength of an earthquake. Even so, the essential physics of these waves means there are limits to what’s possible, he explains:

The biggest key thing is that the phones that are nearest to the earthquake can help users faraway from the earthquake realize it. One among the restrictions of the system is that we can’t warn all users before an earthquake reaches them. The users closest to the epicenter of the earthquake just aren’t likely to urge a warning in time because we’re not predicting earthquakes before time.

That speed also means Google’s Android-based warning system won’t have a person’s within the loop, since these warnings will range from “a few seconds” near the epicenter to 30 or 45 sec on the surface .

“We have many seismologists within the team who are actually just embedded with us,” Stogaitis says. that has Richard Allen, “who spent most of his career on earthquake early warning [systems] and who did tons of the planning of ShakeAlert system, and who’s also quite built a phone-based earthquake detection system within the past also .”

Allen’s MyShake App is an earlier example of a system like this — but the difference now’s that Google can build that detection directly into Android and it can roll in the hay at Google’s scale. (Unlike Google’s system, MyShake works on iPhones.)

Google’s intention is to possess differing levels of alerts for various earthquakes. it’s consulted with seismologists not only on the planning of the core system but also on how the alerts should appear. The goal is to “convey information quite as quickly as possible during a short amount of your time in order that users can understand that they have to react very quickly to an earthquake without reading an enormous wall of text,” Stogaitis says.

Over the future , Google hopes to make an API supported its earthquake detection system. It doesn’t plan on using this technique on iPhones, but if the API comes out then Apple would be liberal to use it. More interesting, though, is what other systems would enjoy an Earthquake Detection API.

For example, somebody could build something that automatically stops an elevator at subsequent floor and opens the door in order that people can get out before the wave comes. And you’ll close up gas valves automatically, you’ll have something that stops medical procedures, or open the door to fireside stations before time. That’s a standard problem in earthquakes where fires are an enormous deal and firefighters often just can’t get out. So, you’ll build something that does that. Airplanes can stop landing as they’re doing this, abort their landing. Trains are often bogged down . There’s a whole ecosystem that would be enabled by using this Android-based detection and having it kind of just publish server-side in order that others can plug into it.

The stakes for such a system would be incredibly high — and therefore the responsibility for maintaining that system would be equally high. In order that API may be a great distance off. Google’s plan is to attenuate false positives and tune the system immediately . Google also had to place in extensive effort to make sure its notifications wouldn’t overwhelm cellular networks. Sending out a ping to each Android phone all directly has the potential to clog those airwaves.

“THE THING ABOUT EARTHQUAKES IS THAT THEY MOVE REALLY, REALLY FAST … SO, WE CAN’T REALLY PUT A PERSON’S WITHIN THE LOOP.”

Google are going to be rolling this technique out via Google Mobile Services, so it won’t require a full OS Update. This suggests both the detection system and therefore the alerts should work on the overwhelming majority of Android phones in use today. (It also means these services won’t be coming to China anytime soon, as Android phones therein country don’t use Google’s services.)

Google is beginning to provide earthquake alerts in California directly , using the prevailing seismometer network. Earthquake data also will begin exposure in Google searches soon also . As for the warnings and alerts supported the info aggregated from Android Phones, which will take a touch longer . Google says that if a neighborhood has an existing earthquake detection and warning system, its preference is to use that instead of the Phone-Based System.

“Basically, there are many many people round the world that live near earthquake fault zones,” Stogaitis says, “and that’s something that we expect we will help with.”