New App Turns Smartphones Into Worldwide Seismic Network

by Robert Sanders,  UC Berkeley News

MyShake, an Android smartphone app that records ground-shaking data from an earthquake, has the potential to transform seismology, according to University of California, Berkeley scientists.

The app, called MyShake, is available from the Google Play Store and runs in the background with little power, so that a phone’s onboard accelerometers can record local shaking any time of the day or night. For now, the app only collects information from the accelerometers, analyzes it and, if it fits the vibrational profile of a quake, relays it and the phone’s GPS coordinates to the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory for analysis. Once enough people are using the free app, UC Berkeley seismologists intend to use the data to warn people of impending jolts from nearby quakes.

Smartphones can easily measure movement caused by a quake because they have three built-in accelerometers designed to sense the orientation of the phone for display or gaming. While constantly improving in sensitivity for the benefit of gamers, however, smartphone accelerometers are far less sensitive than in-ground seismometers. But they are sensitive enough to record earthquakes above a magnitude 5 — the ones that do damage — within 10 kilometers. And what these accelerometers lack in sensitivity, they make up for in ubiquity. There are an estimated 16 million smartphones in California, and 1 billion smartphones worldwide.

The researchers say in simulated tests based on actual earthquakes, MyShake provided timely early warnings as well as or better than the ShakeAlert system now undergoing testing in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Although the researchers caution MyShake is not designed to replace traditional seismic networks, they say crowdsourced seismic networks may be the only option for countries that have a sparse or no ground-based seismic network or early warning system.  Read the article

DCL:  As a resident of California where the “next big one” is a matter of “not if, but when”, I welcome any development in this direction.