Can AI Help Scientists Accurately Predict Earthquakes? Here's What Experts Say

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, have developed a new app called MyShake that can detect earthquakes.

The app is designed to act as a crowdsourced detector that collects motion data from phones across the West Coast — from California to Washington state — and sends alerts based on the phone's location.

“The warning duration varies from a few seconds to tens of seconds depending on the location of the earthquake and the availability of phones,” said Richard Allen, director of the Seismological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on developing the technology.

This app and the use of artificial intelligence to detect earthquakes even seconds before they actually happen can make a huge difference and save lives.

Speaking about the potential breakthrough, Caltech geophysicist Tom Heaton said: “I’ve been studying earthquakes for over 50 years, and I’ve seen many studies by scientists reporting phenomena that precede big earthquakes.”

“In my experience, no one has developed a system to predict earthquakes,” he added. “I firmly believe that this is a problem of self-organized chaos. This is an important area of ​​physics that is largely unfamiliar to earth scientists.”

In the case of Japan, one of the world's most seismically active regions, when a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck the country, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued its first-ever “major earthquake warning,” warning of a “higher-than-usual” chance of another, stronger quake.

But the agency later confirmed that the warning does not mean certainty, saying in its statement: “Information that predicts earthquakes by specifying the date, time and location is just a hoax.”

Here's What Happened in China's AI-Powered Earthquake Prediction Experiment

“Most previous attempts focused on the very complex physics of earthquakes,” said Sergei Fomel, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin who led a seven-month experiment to predict earthquakes in China.

The test results were published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, and were found to exceed expectations.

WATCH: Japan earthquake: Why Japan issued its first-ever 'major earthquake warning'

The AI ​​algorithm was designed to detect statistical bumps in real-time seismic data and was able to correctly predict 70 percent of earthquakes at least a week before they occurred and within 200 miles of their epicenters.

“The success rate of the Chinese experiment was amazing,” Fomel told the New York Post. “Given the complexity of the problem and the long history of previous failures, no one expected such an outcome.”

(With inputs from agencies)

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Brisha is a digital journalist at WION, mainly covering international politics. She loves to delve into topics and explore different cultures and histories.

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