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MyShake turns your phone into an earthquake detector

By Marcus Wong - on 15 Feb 2016, 3:52pm

MyShake turns your phone into an earthquake detector

 

A group of computer scientists and seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, have just developed an Android app that will use your smartphone’s accelerometer to detect earthquakes.

The app is meant to run in the background much like a fitness app, only tapping on your phone’s accelerometer so as to be as energy efficient as possible. Fine tuned algorithms have been applied to the app so that it can distinguish between earthquake vibrations and those of other everyday vibrations, thus allowing it to avoid sending data at the slightest jolt.

The one limitation is that MyShake works best when the phone is placed on a flat surface, but the great strength of the app is that, if installed on multiple phones, the combined reports will be able to automatically alert other phones on the earthquake’s impending path – within less than a second.

 If users over the world had MyShake app installed, we'd have a global seismic network.

This means you’ll be warned of the magnitude of the quake and how many seconds you have before it hits, giving you precious time to react.  If tied up to a train system’s central network or a city’s elevator systems, this could mean trains could get enough time to slow down to allow people to get off, or that lifts could open their doors at the nearest floor, preventing them from getting trapped.

The sheer number of smartphones available almost everywhere in the world now means that this could potentially be an incredibly accurate “crowd-sourced” early warning system that could well save many lives when put to the test. Given how financial issues are preventing some countries from installing enough earthquake early warning systems, this could potentially prove to be an efficient second option. Now imagine if the same system could be applied to other types of natural disasters! 

The app is available for free now on the Google Play store, but the developers are hoping to have an iOS version soon.

Here's a video explaining more about the app.

Find out more at the MyShake website.

Sources: MyShake, Digital Trends, Los Angeles Times

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