A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System

Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by dheera on Monday April 27, 2015 @09:53PM (#9450196)

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.

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Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by SystemOut on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @03:32AM (#9450890)

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.

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Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by skosch on Monday April 27, 2015 @10:14PM (#9450263)

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).

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Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by toomuchtodo on Monday April 27, 2015 @10:35PM (#9450317)

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.

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Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by Maxious on Monday April 27, 2015 @11:34PM (#9450432)

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...

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Re:A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System by progman on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @03:27AM (#9450875)

> 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.

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