Researchers from University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have released an Android app that collects information from smart phones to detect earthquakes and eventually warn users of impending jolts from nearby earthquakes. Earlier only the English version of the app was available. The researchers have now made the Japanese version available for download. The app called MyShake is currently available through the Google Play Store and can be accessed via the MyShake website. It runs in the background and draws very little power, so that a phone’s onboard accelerometers can record local shaking any time of the day or night. One need not worry about available space or battery issues with this app onboard.
Currently, the app only collects information from the accelerometers, analyses it and, if it fits the vibrational profile of a quake, relays it along with the phone’s GPS coordinates to the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory in California for analysis. Since the time of its release on February 12, more than 170,000 people have downloaded the app from around the world, and on any given day 11,000 phones constantly provide data to the system.Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and professor and chair of UC Berkeley’s department of earth and planetary sciences said, we think MyShake can make earthquake early warning faster and more accurate in areas that have a traditional seismic network, such as Japan, and can provide life-saving early warning in countries that have no seismic network.
Ever since its inception, the network has recorded earthquakes in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zeland, Taiwan, Japan and across North America, including induced earthquakes in Oklahoma. The app has enabled the system to record earthquakes as small as magnitude 2.5 and as large as the April 16, 2016, magnitude 7.8 earthquake that shaked Ecuador. Once a sufficiently high people are using the app and certain bugs are worked out, UC Berkeley seismologists have a plan to use the data to warn people who are miles from ground zero that shaking is rumbling their way.
