Your Smartphone May Give You Earthquake Warnings

Imagine getting an earthquake warning on your smartphone. Scientists have found that smartphones and other personal electronic devices could potentially function as early warning systems for large earthquakes.

The researchers believe that by using crowd-sourced observations from participating users' smartphones, earthquakes could be detected and analyzed. In addition, customized earthquake warnings could be transmitted back to users.

"Crowd-sourced alerting means that the community will benefit by data generated from the community," said Sarah Minson, lead author of the new study, in a news release.

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems detect the start of an earthquake and then rapidly transmit warnings to people and automated systems before they experience shaking at their location. While much of the world's population is susceptible to damaging earthquakes, EEW systems are currently operating in only a few regions around the globe, including Japan and Mexico.

"Most of the world does not receive earthquake warnings mainly due to the cost of building the necessary scientific monitoring networks," said Benjamin Brooks, one of the researchers.

The researchers tested the feasibility of crowd-sourced EEW with a simulation of a hypothetical magnitude 7 earthquake, and with real data from the 2011 magnitude 9 Japan earthquake. In the end, the researchers found that crow-sourced EEW could be achieved with only a tiny percentage of people in a given area contributing information from their smartphones.

"thirty years ago it took months to assemble a crude picture of the deformations from an earthquake," said Thomas Heaton, co-author of the study. "This new technology promises to provide a near-instantaneous picture with much greater resolution."

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

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