When technology prevents disasters. On Tuesday, October 25, more than a million Californians received an alert on their Android device warning them of an impending magnitude 4.8 earthquake (later upgraded to 5.1). All thanks to the technology developed in the last two years, the result of a partnership between Google and Berkeley researchers to develop this earthquake detection system, as reported by the US media. cabling.
Technology can’t predict earthquakes, but it detects them before people on the ground do. Technically, Google has integrated alerts into its own mobile operating system, the most widely used in the world. Within seconds, the company can send a notification to people with an Android phone. These alerts are sent to people who are in the area of an earthquake, without them having to download any application.
Smartphones turned into sensors
The tremor detection system is carried out thanks to a network of 1,300 existing sensors. When four sensors are activated simultaneously, they send an alert to a data processing center that determines the level of the earthquake. Google, the MyShake app, or government agencies send alerts to residents.
The dissemination of warnings to areas far from the epicenter, being faster than the speed of propagation of the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of people can thus seek refuge before feeling the first tremors.
Google has also turned Android phones into miniature seismic sensors. In fact, all modern smartphones are equipped with an accelerometer that can pick up signals from an earthquake. So it is the smartphone that sends the message to a detection server with geolocation data.
In France, the government recently implemented a system to notify smartphone users (Android or iOS) in the event of an emergency. Called FR-Alert, it is based on the distribution of notifications directly from the repeater antennas of the operators, according to the directives of the prefectures. But this was not caused by the Hauts-de-France tornado in mid-October.
Source: BFM TV
