A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System | Hacker News Reader

A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System

spectrum.ieee.org

33 pointssimas12 comments

In all honesty I'd say Google and Apple are probably the best candidates to implement an earthquake monitoring system. At any given moment in time there are loads of cellphones that are sitting idly on a table or other fixed object. If the next version of Android and iOS were to gather and send back anonymous, location-tagged accelerometer data automatically (as part of the basic operating system), vibration correlations could be looked for on a massive scale, outlying data points removed, and an earthquake warning system implemented at essentially zero cost. The sensors are already out there.

Battery life impact could be reduced by creating an automatic timeshare where only a small fraction of those millions of people are collecting data at any given time; the data would probably still be sufficient. The percentage of users actively collecting data could also be dynamically increased to improve accuracy when a possible seismic event is detected anywhere in the system.

They would have to transmit accelerometer data (at a reasonably high sampling rate) in real time. Still, different cellphone's earthquake signals would arrive at different times. Also: depending on how my building/table resonates with the quake, the phone sitting on it may make a distorted measurment. So given those issues, I'm not sure it's as easy as you make it seem (though it is a pretty awesome idea).

While a cool hack, its more practical to simply combine data sensing networks for detection. Take a look at how massive the CORS GPS reference network is: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS_Map/

The CORS GPS network is used for precise positioning using position averaging and correction for any atmospheric interference.

Armchair engineering, I would assume the cost for a solid state seismometer (3 axis accelerometer) would be trivial enough to add onto existing reference stations to provide precise positioning data, as well as comprehensive movement data.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is monitored by a global network of seismic, infrasound, hydroacoustic and radionuclide sensors. www.ctbto.org/map/

These usually end up detecting earthquakes though http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards/nuclear-monit...

> They would have to transmit accelerometer data (at a reasonably high sampling rate) in real time.

Not necessarily. They could also follow the SETI approach by providing an app for volunteers who collect the data. The app evaluates the data, filters the noise and sends the abstract data results to a server. There are already many data collections of past earthquakes which could be used as patterns for a neural network in the app.

I saw a news piece a few weeks ago about this idea and I think this article refers to idea they were discussing:

http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2015/04/smart-phones-could-...

I would guess that there are enough phones plugged in at any given moment, even during the day, to provide a large enough sample size. Especially if that were paired with other data sources.

I like this idea of distributing the load, but what about a phone app that was able to use the sensors on your phone. I would think there would be some way of using the iPhone's internal sensors for this purpose, and pushed via an app store, I think it would reach more people. IDK...

The sensors in your phone are totally unreliable to seismic detection. In addition to that the detector should be still.

The challenging part is once the algorithm has detected potential earthquake, how would you distribute the alert within few seconds to everyone? My guess is this should be done on GSM/UMTS network level, rather that using mobile app and relying on no-latency transport.

What about hard drives in a datacenter? Polling read latency for instance of a couple thousand drives could provide enough data. Has this been attempted before?

Those drives are all in one location. In addition to being many, the sensors also need to be widespread.

As far as I know there is nothing more reliable than animals for detecting earthquakes. Typically animals go crazy when they realize a coming earthquake.

http://gizmodo.com/5833733/how-your-dog-knows-an-earthquake-...

One way to take advantage of that could be to stick sensors (radio monitoring, RFID or something) to some animals. If the animals go crazy then the pattern of their movements is a reliable sign of a soon coming earthquake.

It is believed that some animals (not all of them) sense the P-wave that comes faster that the destructive S-wave. So I think it is better to rely on sensors that animals.

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