Smartphones Could Help Sense Earthquakes

[roseofbattle]

Smartphones Could Help Sense Earthquakes

The technology used in smartphones and laptops could be used to send real-time information about a strong earthquake to a central command center.

Smartphones have already made minute-by-minute communication easier. To witness the effect earthquakes and other natural disasters have, one only needs to be on Twitter or Facebook to see the posts piling up within a few minutes of each other. After some research, seismologists from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology plan to use smartphones in a different way.

Antonio D'Alessandro and Giuseppe D'Anna published the results of their study in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America and found the tiny sensor found in smartphones for adjusting the orientation of the screen could be used to create a real-time urban seismic network. The study involved testing the Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) accelerometers in iPhones and compared it to an earthquake balance accelerometer. They concluded the MEMS accelerometers in smartphones can detect earthquakes greater than magnitude 5 when located near the epicenter, but it is less effective for weaker earthquakes. D'Alessandro and D'Anna suggest that this technology could transmit in real-time ground motion data to a central location, helping first responders identify the areas with greatest damage.

"A real-time urban seismic network can drastically reduce casualties in urban areas immediately following a strong earthquake, by quickly distributing information about the distribution and intensity of ground shaking," D'Alessandro said.

Because the sensors are so common in mobile technology today, seismologists could use the data to reduce the time it takes to gather information and deploy emergency responders. However, the technology is significantly less helpful in regions with poor internet connections.

Source: Wired UK [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/ssoa-tsu092313.php]

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[rofltehcat]

This sounds great but I wonder if this is actually a good idea. If an earth quake is strong enough to cause casualties and destroy infrastructure, the mobile and internet networks may not work properly anymore, reducing the coverage. Furthermore, many people will try to phone for help, call friends and family, try to "report" the earth quake or might try to access news (video) feeds.
This system could further stress the already strained infrastructure. Sure, it could detect the epicenter but the damages to buildings can still vary a lot and some parts of the city may be affected even stronger if they had worse quality buildings, so the data might not even be that useful. I also wonder how the system will handle people running around (or shaking the thing to "make help come sooner").

 

[NLS]

This sounds great but I wonder if this is actually a good idea. If an earth quake is strong enough to cause casualties and destroy infrastructure, the mobile and internet networks may not work properly anymore, reducing the coverage. Furthermore, many people will try to phone for help, call friends and family, try to "report" the earth quake or might try to access news (video) feeds.
This system could further stress the already strained infrastructure. Sure, it could detect the epicenter but the damages to buildings can still vary a lot and some parts of the city may be affected even stronger if they had worse quality buildings, so the data might not even be that useful. I also wonder how the system will handle people running around (or shaking the thing to "make help come sooner").

Would it really cause that much network strain though? All it needs to do is: Detect if any shake is beyond a certain threshold, send a "Shake of magnitude x detected near device y" message to HQ. And that's it. All done in a second.
Even if you had a thousand of these in a grid reporting in at once, it would be next to nothing to the normal traffic that goes on in daily life. It's not until after the quake hits that people start going batshit insane and put the stress on the network. Since the initial reporting would be done THE SECOND IT HITS, it will slip by to HQ just before people start reacting.

 

[weirdee]

also, there's the chance that somebody with say, a hundred friends, could go somewhere and then they all shake their phones really vigorously at the same time

 

[Strazdas]

also, there's the chance that somebody with say, a hundred friends, could go somewhere and then they all shake their phones really vigorously at the same time

this. very much this. i got a program that counts my steps based on those sensors. lets just say that riding in a bus sometimes triggers it. for over a thousand people at the same time. am i running at that time? no. but the program thinks so.