Earth Sciences: MyShake: A smartphone seismic network for earthquake early warning and beyond

Abstract

Large magnitude earthquakes in urban environments continue to kill and injure tens to hundreds of thousands of people, inflicting lasting societal and economic disasters. Earthquake earlywarning (EEW) provides seconds tominutes of warning, allowing people to move to safe zones and automated slowdown and shutdown of transit and other machinery. The handful of EEW systems operating around the world use traditional seismic and geodetic networks that exist only in a few nations. Smartphones are much more prevalent than traditional networks and contain accelerometers that can also be used to detect earthquakes. We report on the development of a new type of seismic system, MyShake, that harnesses personal/private smartphone sensors to collect data and analyze earthquakes.We show that smartphones can record magnitude 5 earthquakes at distances of 10 km or less and develop an on-phone detection capability to separate earthquakes fromother everyday shakes. Our proof-of-concept system then collects earthquake data at a central site where a network detection algorithm confirms that an earthquake is under way and estimates the location andmagnitude in real time. This information can then be used to issue an alert of forthcoming ground shaking. MyShake could be used to enhance EEW in regionswith traditional networks and could provide the only EEW capability in regionswithout. In addition, the seismicwaveforms recorded could be used to deliver rapidmicroseismmaps, study impacts on buildings, and possibly image shallow earth structure and earthquake rupture kinematics.