How the Google app that warns of the arrival of an earthquake works
Google launches an app that warns, exploiting the potential of the smartphone, of the arrival of an earthquake
Smartphones as seismographs. Google is creating an earthquake warning system that will harness the potential of Android phones around the world to allow people to gain valuable moments in the event of an earthquake.
THE EARTHQUAKE ALERT APP
The application that Google thinks of has the goal of simultaneously alerting all people living in an area (and who have an Androind smartphone) of an upcoming earthquake. The developed technology, detecting the danger, would send the position to Google, which before sounding the alarm would try to understand the epicenter and magnitude by crossing the data coming from the different reports (about a hundred are enough).
THE OPERATION
Smartphones will manage emergency alerts through a detection and warning system based on the accelerometers of Android devices: the phone is able to detect the first wave of the earthquake (defined P) not perceived by humans, which instead senses the S wave (the one that would cause the most damage).
The alarm alerts on the arrival of the S wave, according to The Verge , are generated by the existing ShakeAlert system, which uses data generated by traditional seismometers.
IT TESTS IN CALIFORNIA
The technology will be tested gradually. In the first phase, Google will work with the United States Geological Survey and the California Office of Emergency Services to send agency earthquake alerts to Android users in that state, but only after testing and improving the application.
NO PRIVACY RISK
Waiting for a more widespread launch, Google reassures users on the privacy side. Marc Stogaitis, the program's chief engineer, pointed out that the information collected as part of the program is "de-identified" by users and that Google only needs "gross" location information to function.
“What we really need for the project to work are just the little mini seismometers that are out there,” says Stogaitis. "We don't need to know anything about the person who owns it, because it's not needed," Stogatis explains, adding: "" Each phone can detect that something like an earthquake is happening, but then you need a set of phones to to know with certainty that it is an earthquake ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/come-funziona-lapp-di-google-che-avverte-dellarrivo-di-un-terremoto/ on Sun, 16 Aug 2020 03:35:23 +0000.