Crowd-Funded Earthquake Early-Warning System

TL;DR

This paper proposes a cost-effective earthquake early-warning system by repurposing old Android smartphones as seismic sensors, enabling developing countries to deploy affordable and rapid earthquake detection networks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of converting existing smartphones into seismic sensors using built-in hardware and web technologies, reducing costs and increasing accessibility.

Findings

Smartphones can effectively detect tremors using built-in accelerometers.

A network of repurposed smartphones can provide early earthquake warnings.

The system is low-cost, scalable, and suitable for resource-limited settings.

Abstract

Earthquake early warning systems has been proven to save countless lives in Japan, Mexico, and Chile, where earthquake warnings are often broadcast live on TV up to a minute before residents experience shaking. Unfortunately, traditional early warning systems require extensive capital investment. The high cost of traditional earthquake early-warning systems and limited budgets prevent earthquake-prone developing countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India, Burma, Ghana, Nigeria, Columbia, Venezuela, and Bolivia from building traditional earthquake warning systems. This project describes repurposing old Android smartphones into affordable dedicated seismometers to detect tremors. These smartphones have become disposable items and are continuously "upgraded" and replaced. Yet every one of these devices includes everything needed to act as a dedicated seismometer: Wi-Fi capability, GPS, and an accelerometer. The software developed for this project converts these smartphones into dedicated seismometers and uses existing web technologies for telemetry services. This system would also trigger alerts to all devices that have the software installed whenever a tremor is detected, effectively making each seismic detection station double as an earthquake early-warning alarm. A large network of these seismic detection stations will effectively create an affordable earthquake early-warning system that can be rapidly implemented at an extremely low cost. It would provide developing nations an affordable life-saving alternative to expensive traditional earthquake early-warning systems. This solution is cheap, keeps old smartphones from landfills, and will save lives.