Earthquake, it can destroy everything within a fraction of seconds. The destruction can’t be estimated and there’s no way to stop it. At such times, every second is important to save your life. Several attempts have been made to find a way to make it possible but none of them gave better results to get a warning about earthquakes before they strike. But, in this modernized world, everything is possible!
A recent study by the U.S Geological Survey (USGS) stated that the smartphones could be a master device to detect the earthquake well before it strikes. Many researchers have been working to make it possible and they are now very close of proving it!
How Smartphone Will Detect the Earthquake?
The researchers in U.S have proved that it will be possible to detect the earthquake with the help GPS receivers in the smartphone. By using the crowed-sourced observations from the participants, the scientists can detect and analyze the danger of an earthquake. Crowd-sourced is based on the alerts received by the smartphone users and the scientists will be able to track these alerts to warn you of the earthquake.
The automated systems which can receive the alerts from users from a single place, can warn the other smartphone users by tracking their GPS systems and the sensors used in the phone.
Researchers tested the feasibility of crowdsourced earthquake early warning systems with a simulation of a magnitude 7 quake, and with real data from the 2011 magnitude 9 Tohoku-oki, Japan, earthquake. The results show that crowdsourced warning systems could be achieved with only a tiny percentage of people in a given area contributing information from their smartphones.
Might Not Detect the Earthquake of Less Than 7 on Richter scale:
“Crowd-sourced data are less precise, but for larger earthquakes that cause large shifts in the ground surface, they contain enough information to detect that an earthquake has occurred, information necessary for early warning,” said study co-author Susan Owen from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California.
The present system which is used to detect the earthquake and send a warning message on the smartphone, cannot detect the earthquake which is less than 7 in magnitude. This might be a drawback for the smartphone users because the sensors would not be able to detect the small movements in the ground.
But yes, it is surely useful to save many lives irrespective of the range in which it can detect the earthquake.
Since I’ve known there is also an earthquake early warning project for smartphones in experimental level. but recently they announced they planned to release their app in 2016.
I don’t know if it is required any additional equipment.
It’s amazing and it would be great if smartphone can detect the earthquake.