Design of a smart multimodal earthquake response mobile application

Abstract

Indonesia is located in the Pacific Ring of fire, putting it under constant risk of natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Earthquakes are one of the biggest threat of natural disasters in Indonesia and can strike anytime in any area. A key example is the 2004 Aceh earthquake, which caused a large tsunami, killing more than 160,000 people and destroyed more than 200 shops and homes. While Indonesia has significantly improved its disaster mitigation systems in the past decade, problems remain. Seismological stations are still relatively few and in between, community readiness and resilience for earthquakes remains low, and response activities are often hampered by lack of equipment, such as for finding potential survivors trapped in rubble. In order to help alleviate these issues, this paper describes the design of a smart multimodal earthquake response mobile application. The proposed system has four main functionalities, namely (1) broadcast of earthquake alert to mobile phones from the local earthquake measurement centre, (2) smart voice activated interactive guide to guide community members on how to react to an earthquake event and arrive to a safe place based on their current situation, (3) A system to search for trapped survivors based on Bluetooth and wifi hotspot emitted by survivors, and (4) recording of earthquake waves based on mobile phone accelerators to be used to build a more granular geospatial database on earthquake features. The system implements machine learning algorithm, utilizes voice, picture and text activated interface to match any situation’s need, and basic augmented reality to help guide users to a safe place.