Google adds earthquake warning tools to Android phones; here's how it works

Google on August 11 added earthquake warning tools to Android smartphones in a bid to provide data that could alert users of a tremor nearby. While the feature, as of yet, has only been rolled out in California, the search engine reportedly informed that it will be introduced in Indonesia and other developing countries as well. 

The search engine, in its blog post, said that it will initially start working with the United States Geological Survey to send earthquake alerts to Android devices. While the feature, for now, is just available in California, Google informed that the Android devices will send alerts to phones from the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system. The company added that Android phones can be turned into ‘mini seismometers’ to detect when earthquakes occur and to send advanced signals to the alerting system. 

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Google said, “With the growing cost of natural disasters worldwide, we saw an opportunity to use Android to provide people with timely, helpful earthquake information when they search, as well as a few seconds warning to get themselves and their loved ones to safety if needed”. 

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Android phone-based earthquake detection 

The company explained that all Android smartphones come tiny accelerometers that can sense earthquakes. The company added that the phones are even sensitive enough to detect the P-wave, which is the first wave that comes out of an earthquake and is typically much less damaging than the S-wave, which comes afterwards. Google said that if the phone detects something that it may think is an earthquake, then it will send a signal to ‘Google’s earthquake detection server’, along with the location of where the shaking occurred. 

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The search engine explained, “The server then combines information from many phones to figure out if an earthquake is happening. We’re essentially racing the speed of light (which is roughly the speed at which signals from a phone travel) against the speed of an earthquake. And lucky for us, the speed of light is much faster!”

They further added, “Over the coming year, you can expect to see the earthquake alerts coming to more states and countries using Android’s phone-based earthquake detection”. 

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