San Francisco earthquake triggered Android early warning

Yesterday afternoon, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck the San Francisco area, the largest in the area in the better part of a decade. But for those with an Android phone, there was an early earthquake warning for residents of San Francisco and nearby areas.

In 2020, Google released the “Android Earthquake Alerts System,” which collects data from Android smartphones to provide early warning when an earthquake is about to strike your area.

The system works using sensors on your phone to detect an earthquake’s “P-wave,” a smaller initial wave that arrives before the more destructive “S-Wave.” With your phone and those people around you, the system can detect an earthquake and provide a few precious seconds of early warning. The system expanded worldwide in 2021, but in the California area it interacts with a “ShakeAlert” service designed by researchers at Berkley that’s integrated into Android. The “ShakeAlert” system uses appropriate seismometers to detect and send these alerts from the USGS.

In the time the system went online, Google shared examples of when it was successful, including a 4.5 magnitude earthquake in Los Angeles as well as a later 6.7 earthquake in the Philippines in 2021, with many expressing how the system gave them several seconds of time. Warning before the earthquake can already be felt.

Google’s Vice President of Engineering for Android, Dave Burke, came to Twitter hours after the earthquake to show what the system had discovered. In the tweet below, he shows the system estimate for P and S waves.

Earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area today. Yellow/red represents the vibration of Android phones which act as seismometers. The circles are our inferred estimate of P&S waves. Earthquake alerts are sent instantly to surrounding phones before the waves hit pic.twitter.com/8pumt19ReI

— Dave Burke (@davey_burke) October 26, 2022

Early warning notifications sent to Android phones were sent almost immediately, with many noting the warning seconds on Twitter, and many others asking why Apple’s iPhones don’t reflect the same functionality. A member of the Google security team for Android expressed that this comes from “the power of unlocking” based on his experience seeing his Android phone alert the earthquake seconds before it strikes, while the office visitor’s iPhone didn’t receive any alert until after the earthquake struck Already.

My Android phone alerted me to today’s earthquake several seconds before it happened. The office visitor with the iPhone received the alert after several seconds. We were very close to the epicenter. # group

— David Kleidermacher (@DaveKSecure) October 26, 2022

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