Posted: 12 Feb 2016 06:20 PM PST
Photo
credit: Japanexperterna.se/Flickr CC by SA 2.0 By Mary Beth Griggs Your
phone, yes, the one you’re (probably) reading this on, can detect
earthquakes. All you need is an app. Researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley announced today the release of a new app called
MyShake, available as a free download for Android smartphones in the
Google Play store. It uses the accelerometer in your phone (the device
that lets your phone adjust the screen when you turn it sideways) and
GPS to measure how much shaking is happening in a given location. The
hope is that eventually, if enough people download it, the app will
allow your phone to function as both a personal seismometer and an early
warning system. When the app detects shaking that resembles an
earthquake, the information is sent to a server. If enough phones detect
shaking, that data is pooled together in a computer and analyzed. If
it’s a large earthquake, in the future alerts can be generated from the
phones of people closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, and sent out
ahead of the shaking, giving people further away (also equipped with the
app) the chance to drop, cover, and hold on. But in order for the app
to be effective as an early warning system, a decent number of people
have to download it. The researchers estimate that in order to
accurately detect the origin and start time of large earthquakes in a
location, there need to be at least 300 phones equipped with the app in a
roughly 4,761 square mile area. The more MyShake-equipped phones in an
area, the faster the team can get accurate information.
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