Smartphones To Warn You Of Earthquake

For example, if phones from fewer than 5000 people in a large metropolitan area responded, the earthquake could be detected and analysed fast enough to issue a warning to areas farther away before the onset of strong shaking.

However, smartphone sensors could sense earthquakes of magnitude seven or larger, but not smaller yet potentially damaging quakes.

"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.

This technology could serve regions of the world that cannot afford conventional earthquake early warning systems, which are very expensive.

"Most of the world does not receive earthquake warnings mainly due to the cost of building the necessary scientific monitoring networks," said project lead Benjamin Brooks, also from USGS.

The study was published in the new AAAS journal Science Advances.
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