How your phones can detect earthquakes
Technology
Earthquake alerts on phones can be found in Safety, Emergency section of your phone's Setting's app
(Web Desk) - Fifty years since the first mobile phone call, the technology we carry around in our pocket is helping to create the world's biggest earthquake detection system.
On 25 October 2022, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake jolted California’s Bay Area. Fortunately, it was more of a rattle than a violent shake, but reports from residents across the region flooded into the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from those who had felt it.
There was no damage reported, but the earthquake was significant in another way – many people in the area received alerts on their phones before the shaking started.
Similar warnings gave residents in Southern California up to 30 seconds of warning before a magnitude 5.2 earthquake centred just south of the city of Bakersfield on the evening of 6 August 2024.
More crucially still, many of these phones helped detect the earthquake in the first place, too.
Google has been working with USGS and academics at a number of universities in California to develop an early warning system that alerts users a few seconds before tremors arrive.
It is a brief window of warning, but a few seconds can give enough time to shelter under a table or desk. It can also be enough time to slow trains, stop planes from taking off or landing and keep cars from entering bridges or tunnels.
As such, this system is likely to save lives when stronger quakes hit.
Most smartphones running Google's Android operating system have on-board accelerometers – the circuitry which detects when a phone is being moved.
These are most commonly used to tell the phone to re-orientate its display from portrait to landscape mode when it is tilted, for example, and also helps provide information about step-count for Google's onboard fitness tracker.
HOW TO ACTIVATE EARTHQUAKE ALERTS
The settings to turn on earthquake alerts on phones running Android can be found in the Safety and Emergency section of your phone's Setting's app.
The system requires internet access via wi-fi or mobile data. iPhone owners living in Japan can also turn on Emergency Alerts in the notifications section of their device settings.
But the sensors are surprisingly sensitive, and can also act like a mini seismometer.
Google has introduced a function that allows users to allow their phone to automatically send data to the Android Earthquake Alerts System, if their device picks up vibrations that are characteristic of the Primary (P) waves of an earthquake.
