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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

I was also hoping to create an early warning system and at least wake me out of bed a few seconds before an earthquake hits so I'm at least on the way to sheltering myself from falling objects.

The response I got from USGS was this:

> You can read our FAQ on that at https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-fast-does-earthquake-informati....

> You may also be interested in ShakeAlert - see https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/earlywarning/.

So in short, no, they don't really have it yet. I wonder though if we (hackers) could create a realtime system for the bay area since USGS has been on it for years without results. About 20-50 sensors scattered in homes around the bay would probably be enough for an early warning system. Warnings can be delivered via a mobile app, or some kind of realtime API that anyone can use for their own purposes (e.g. stopping machinery, sounding building alarms, ...).

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If you want to do this, look to Japan.

I'm not working in this field, but I know they put a lot of effort into not just the geology, but also the psychology of warnings, esp. compared to acceptable false positive rates.

They were able to warn everyone in real-time when North Korea launched those missiles. A quick search turned up this article that the J-Alert system is not perfect: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/10/national/japans...

> I was also hoping to create an early warning system and at least wake me out of bed a few seconds before an earthquake hits so I'm at least on the way to sheltering myself from falling objects.

Wouldn't it be safer to not put objects that might fall above your bed?

he might have a roof

...which you also can't really get out from under in a few seconds.

I'm also not really sure what I could actually do to "shelter" myself in that timeframe.

If you google "earthquake-proof bed" you'll find at least one way to avoid getting crushed by (a typical) falling roof.

It sounds like they have it, ShakeAlert, they just don't give access to the public for some reason.

I found this document that has some interesting technical details https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2018/1155/ofr20181155.pdf

We have it, it was tested out just yesterday.

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/10/17/20919639/ca...

You can get small raspberry pi based seismographs from https://raspberryshake.org/ ... could be interesting to integrate it with a small alarms or web/mobile apps that go off when it detects p-wave/s-wave arrivals with amplitudes above a user-specified threshold (so its not going off every day with smaller/distant events that are not felt by humans at the measurement location)

If you haven't, take a look at the crowd sourced real-time lightning maps. Loads if sensors are scattered world-wide triangulating lightning strikes - there are even websites that estimate the sound wave as it grows & you'll hear the thunder right as the circle envelopes your location. Very fun to play around with during storms!

Thanks! It's nice to see someone finally address my question head-on. I feel the same way as you -- I can't fathom why it's taking them so long. Sad to hear nothing exists yet, but glad it's not just me being unable to find something.

The USGS has a RabbitMQ broker for distributing early alerts but it's not available to the general public.

It seems like they should just allow one or two vetted members of the public access to the broker, and then they can re-broadcast it to whoever wants it (with strong disclaimers about reliability)

That's pretty much what they're doing, the city of LA and the state of CA (by way of UC Berkeley) have their own apps that I believe are just rebroadcasting that data

Write a bot that detects earthquake-related tweets, a la xkcd.

https://xkcd.com/723/

I've actually done this and get notifications usually 30 seconds post quake just like xkcd suggested.

I thought of that but 30 seconds is too long for an early warning system, the waves travel pretty fast.

The only way to get notification of an earhquake in time is a prediction system.

Depending on where the epicenter is, it may take 1-2 minutes for the S waves (which are the slower, damaging ones) to travel to the major population center. Up to 30s of warning for an earthquake early warning system is enough for people to take cover and for cities to shut off things like water/gas lines. That being said my system is definitely not ready for that, and twitter can be seen as one source of information used to augment other early detection systems.

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