Silicon Valley quake shows off Android Earthquake Alert System in action
Several countries prone to earthquakes have an effective national early warning system that lets their citizens take action seconds, perhaps even minutes before ground-level shaking begins. That’s great for those countries, but most of the world — includingmostof the United States — does not have the systems in place to facilitate such advanced warnings. Google, though, has been working on spreading itsAndroid Earthquake Alert System, which provides a literal surface-level warning to device owners in quake zones, across the world. Yesterday, the United States got to see it in action.
TheUnited States Geological Surveyrecorded an M5.1 quake originating on the southern fringe of Mount Hamilton, about 10 miles east of San Jose, California, at 11:42 a.m. local time. It was a good shake that could break up some windows and sidewalks, but nothing catastrophic on a grand scale — especially in a state where building codes for new and existing developments require earthquake proofing.
Still, it generated enough motion to stir up commotion on Android devices right across the heart of Silicon Valley.
In the United States, the Android Earthquake Alert System has been running warnings issued from the USGS’s ShakeAlert system across the California, Oregon, and Washington since 2020. More recently, however, Google has been working ondetermining seismic activityby crowdsourcing accelerometer data from users' Android devices. Here’s how the data emerged as the quake propagated, courtesy ofDave Burke, vice president of engineering for Android:
The P wave marks the first perceptible signs of a tremor with effects on gaseous, liquid, and solid matter while the S wave represents the stronger shearing or shaking force of the event, traveling slower through the ground.
By sensing the time-space trend in shaking devices, Google says it will be able to warn more users in advance of oncoming shaking — even in areas without a proper early warning system.
In this case, nearly everyone who was notified about this earthquake likely got that message passed along from ShakeAlert. But it’s definitely cool to see how a parallel solution from Google works, all things in the fishbowl being equal.
Google is expected to have AEAS activated in most countries by the end of this year. The hope here is to save lives, so if even one person is able to take action thanks to an alert they might not have received otherwise, it’s a win for sure.
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