Scientists say Android phones can detect earthquakes before they strike

Srinagar, July 19: In 2020, Google launched the Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system to help people in earthquake-prone areas get early warnings using their smartphones. Unlike traditional earthquake early warning systems, which rely on costly seismic stations, Google’s approach is both accurate and affordable.

Now available in 98 countries, the AEA system has reached over 2.5 billion people in just three years. It works by collecting data from millions of Android devices worldwide, turning smartphones into mini-seismometers.

A recent study published in the journal Science confirms that the system performs as well as traditional seismic networks when it comes to detecting earthquakes and sending timely alerts. This crowd-sourced method proves to be an innovative and reliable alternative to expensive infrastructure.

As it turns out, 85 per cent of users who received earthquake alerts also experienced sharing. Out of these, 36 per cent said they got an alert before the earthquake, while 28 per cent and 23 per cent of people said they received an alert during and after the shaking began. In the video below, the yellow dots indicate the number of smartphones nearby, while the red dot marks the epicentre.
The yellow circle is the P-wave’s estimated location, and the red circle is for the S-wave, which is responsible for most of the damage. The animation shows how phones detected shaking as the 6.2 magnitude earthquake progressed in Turkey, causing damage and loss of life in the country.

In a blog post, Google explained that its Android Earthquake Alert system uses accelerometer sensors in smartphones to sense vibrations, which may or may not indicate if an earthquake is happening. If the system thinks an earthquake is imminent, it then sends a signal to the tech giant’s earthquake detection server along with an approximate location of where the shaking was recorded.

The server then combines data from various smartphones in the vicinity to determine if an earthquake is actually happening. With more than 2 billion devices around the world acting as mini-earthquake detectors, Google says its system is the world’s largest earthquake detection network.