Today’s phones can do many things. For example, you can use GPS navigation, which is very convenient when you are late for an appointment. You can download your flight tickets digitally, saving you the day you forgot to print your boarding pass for your flight.and now they It can also be used for humanitarian purposes and could possibly save thousands of lives thanks to a project launched by the University of California, Berkeleysupported by the U.S. Geological Survey and Chile’s National Seismological Center.
This project consists more or less of an app developed to detect earthquakes, Send alerts to users in your area, providing critical information seconds before disaster strikes seek safety.
A smartphone that can predict earthquakes
The app MyShake is already available for Android, and the developer plans to extend it to other operating systems soon. Based on the use of features inherent in almost every smartphone on the market, the performance of this early warning system is always improving.
Combined use of GPS and accelerometer
Global Positioning System (GPS) and your phone’s accelerometer are two elements that help MyShake detect earthquakes and warn people. accelerometer Devices that detect movement and orientation of smartphones: register rotation and movement Allows the screen to adjust its vertical or horizontal position.
Following a lot of testing and fieldwork, the researchers told the app to match the movements caused by possible earthquakes with those caused by normal user activities such as running, traveling by train, carrying a mobile phone in a rucksack. You have successfully “taught” the app to distinguish. , or accidentally drop it.
However, when the device registers crustal movements, it uses GPS to send alerts to local earthquake centers and other devices in the area. This is where crowdsourcing comes into play. A minimal number of devices should register the same movement in the area. At the same time, make sure the alert is not an error.According to the developer, this minimum number is At least 300 devices in an area of 12,331 square kilometers.
In the future, alerts from devices closest to the epicenter may be sent to users far away to predict major earthquakes.
“There are about 1.3 million seismic motions per year throughout the earth.”
Richter 7 or less
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that around 1.3 million earthquakes occur annually across the globe, most of which are imperceptible and harmless. Of all these, only 15 reached magnitude 7.0 or higher on the Richter scale, and these are precisely the most destructive and best MyShake can detect. Earthquakes such as Fukushima in 2011 and his Nepal in 2015 both had dire consequences. If the app was present when it happened, it could have been detected by a nearby mobile. Affected people would have been alerted about 20 seconds before the earthquake struck.and possibly thousands more lives could have been saved.
With this technology, the next generation of smartphones will undoubtedly become a lifesaver as well.
sauce: United States of America today and Popsi.
