Android has become the global network for earthquake detection

Google builds a global Android earthquake alert system. The first part of this system is rolling out today. If you subscribe, the accelerometer in your Android phone will become a single data point for an algorithm designed to detect earthquakes. Ultimately, this system will automatically send warnings to people who might be affected.

It’s a feature made possible by Google’s strengths: the staggering numbers of Android phones around the world and the clever use of algorithms in big data. As with its collaboration with Apple on exposure tracking and other Android features like auto accident detection and emergency positioning services, it demonstrates that there are untapped ways smartphones can be used for something more important than scrolling.

Google rolls out the system in small stages. First, Google is partnering with the US Geological Survey and the California Bureau of Emergency Services to send earthquake alerts to agencies to Android users in that state. These alerts are generated by the already existing ShakeAlert system, which uses the data generated by traditional seismometers.

“The server collects data from many phones, all in one area, and determines whether an earthquake is occurring or not.”

“It would be great if there were seismometer-based systems everywhere that could detect earthquakes,” says Mark Stogaitis, Google’s lead Android software engineer. But he continues, “This is not really practical and is unlikely to have global coverage because seismographs are very expensive. They need to be maintained constantly, so you need a lot of them in an area to have a good earthquake early warning system.”

So the second and third phases of Google’s plan will be run instead of Android phones. But the company is proceeding somewhat cautiously. In the second stage, Google will display translated results in Google searches for earthquakes based on the data it detects from Android phones. The idea there is that when you feel an earthquake, you go to Google to see if this is how you felt or not.

Before the stage it sends out alerts, Google will simply start putting earthquake information in its search results. Image: Google

Finally, once you gain more confidence in the accuracy of the system, Google will actively start sending earthquake warnings to people who live in areas where there are no seismometer-based warning systems.

Stogaitis says the information collected as part of this program is “non-specific” from users and that Google only needs “approximate” location information in order to work. Both earthquake alerts and a detection system are also shared. “What we really need for this is just the little seismographs out there,” says Stogaitis. “We don’t need to know anything about the same person sending it because that doesn’t matter.”

An Android phone can become a “mini seismometer” because it has an accelerometer – the thing that detects whether or not you’ve spun it. The Android system uses data from this sensor to find out if the phone vibrates. It only turns on when the Android phone is plugged in and not in use, to conserve battery life.

“We found out [Android phones are] Sensitive enough to detect earthquake waves. When an earthquake passes, they can detect it and usually they see both the main types of waves, the P wave and the S wave, ”says Stogaitis.“ Every phone is capable of detecting something like an earthquake, but then you need a bunch of phones to know for sure that it’s an earthquake. Happen or occur.”

“There are many factors that will affect the number of phones you need. I think the key is that we do not need super-accurate information but we need an appropriate amount of information.”

The P wave (primary wave) is the first and fastest wave to be sent from the epicenter. The S wave (secondary wave) is slower but can be much larger. Google’s system is able to detect both. “People often don’t feel the P wave because it’s smaller, and the S-wave tends to do more damage,” says Stogaitis. “P-wave could be something that tells you to prepare for the S-wave.”

This data is processed in a classic Google fashion: using algorithms on data gathered from thousands of phones to determine if an earthquake is occurring or not. When traditional seismometers are expensive and accurate, Android phones are cheap and versatile. Google can use Bayesian filters and other algorithms to convert these numbers into earthquake data accurate enough to send out warning alerts.

Google says its system is able to locate the epicenter and determine the strength of the earthquake. However, the basic physics of those waves means that there are limits to what is possible, as he explains:

The most important thing is that phones closer to earthquake can help users away from earthquake recognize it. One of the limitations of the system is that we cannot warn all users before an earthquake arrives. It is unlikely that users closest to the epicenter will receive a warning in time because we do not expect earthquakes to occur early.

This speed also means that Google’s Android-based warning system will have no human in the loop, as these warnings will range from “a few seconds” near the epicenter to 30 or 45 seconds outside.

“We have a lot of seismologists within the team who have literally joined us,” says Stogaitis. Among them is Richard Allen, “who has spent most of his career in earthquake early warning [systems] And who has designed a lot of ShakeAlert, and who has also built a phone-based earthquake detection system in the past as well. ”

Allen’s MyShake app is an earlier example of a system like this – but the difference now is that Google can create this discovery directly in Android and can do it on a Google scale. (Unlike Google’s system, MyShake works on iPhones.)

Google aims to get different levels of alerts for different earthquakes. He consulted with seismologists not only about the design of the platform but also about how the alerts would appear. The goal is to “transmit information as quickly as possible in a short period of time so that users can understand that they need to respond very quickly to an earthquake without reading a huge wall of text,” says Stogetes.

Google Alerts will contain very basic safety recommendations. Image: Google

In the long term, Google hopes to build an API based on its seismic system. You are not planning to use this system on iPhones, but if API appears Apple is free to use it. More interestingly, however, is what other systems will take advantage of an earthquake detection API.

For example, someone could build something that automatically stops the elevator on the next floor and opens the door so people can get out before the wave comes. And you can automatically turn off gas valves, and you can have something that stops medical procedures, or opens the door to fire stations early. This is a common problem in earthquakes where fires are a big problem and firefighters often cannot get out of it. So, you can build something that does that. Aircraft can stop landing while they are doing so, and cancel their landing. Trains can be slowed down. There is an entire ecosystem that can be enabled with this Android based discovery and kind of make it server-side deploy so that others can connect.

The risks of such a system would be incredibly high – and the responsibility for maintaining this system would be equally high. So the API is out of reach. Google’s plan is to reduce the false positives and fine-tune the system for now. Google also had to make extensive efforts to ensure that its notifications did not overwhelm cellular networks. Sending a ping to every Android phone in one go has the potential to block those airwaves.

“The thing about earthquakes is that they move really, really fast … so, we really can’t put a human in the loop.”

Google will roll out this system via Google Mobile Services, so it won’t require a full OS update. This means that both detection and alerts should work on the vast majority of Android phones in use today. (It also means that these services will not be arriving in China anytime soon, as Android phones in this country do not use Google services).

Google began providing seismic alerts in California right away, using its existing seismograph network. Earthquake data will also start appearing in Google searches soon, too. For warnings and alerts based on data collected from Android phones, this will take a little longer. Google says that if the area has an existing earthquake detection and warning system, its preference is to use that rather than the phone-based system.

Basically, there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who live near earthquake fault zones, and that’s something we think we can help with, ”says Stogaitis.

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