"In classes that fall, Mr. Wani and other graduate students turned the problem into a project. Using crowdsourced ground-shaking reports from previous earthquakes, they trained a computer system to predict the areas of greatest impact so that responders would not have to rely on 911 calls."

After a major earthquake, I seriously doubt competent emergency dispatch operators will be proactively sending critically-understaffed ambulances, fire engines, and police to a location identified by old, crowd-sourced cell phone shake data cobbled together for a grad-school project.

Not that emergency systems IT is not without challenges: old (often third party) technology, overly stove-piped administrative domains, and just plain old out-of-date technical skills. In other words, there's lots of low hanging fruit for bright young programmers looking to serve their community!