Berkeley scientists develop quake-detection phone app

Scientists at UC Berkeley began mobilizing a global smartphone network Friday to detect earthquakes and someday send out life-saving early warnings before dangerous temblors shake the distant ground.

In a crowdsourcing program called “MyShake,” the scientists released the first quake-detecting mobile app for Android phones, available free on Google Play, and said a second app for Apple iPhones will be available soon.

The MyShake app has been tested with 300 volunteer smartphone users across an area of nearly 4,000 square miles and it showed that the quake-detection system performed well, said Richard M. Allen, director of UC Berkeley’s Seismological Laboratory who is leading the project.

Modern mobile phones contain built-in motion sensors called accelerometers that can detect a phone’s smallest vibrations.

When an earthquake ruptures the ground, smartphones with the MyShake app can sense the first shaking, analyze it, and instantly relay the information to a specialized cloud server that collects it from other phones in the system and determines the quake’s magnitude, Allen said.

[...] we think it can make earthquake early warnings faster and more accurately in areas that do have a traditional seismic network, and could provide life-saving early warning in countries that experience many destructive earthquakes but have very few conventional seismic detectors.

There are hardly any conventional seismic stations in the region there,” Allen said, “but a network of mobile phones in full operation would have detected that quake and, based on its distance from the capital, the network would have provided 20 seconds of early warning that could have saved many lives.

At the UC Berkeley seismology lab that Allen directs, graduate student Qingkai Kong developed the first quake detection algorithm for My Shake smartphones and tested its ability in the strong vibrations produced by 45 simulated earthquakes at the university’s large seismic shaketable at the Richmond Field Station.