Coming from the Seismological Laboratory at Berkeley, MyShake is the app that predicts incoming earthquakes and it was released just last Friday. Along with it, there was also a video posted via YouTube that features Richard Allen, the director of the laboratory that developed the app, explaining how the app works and individuals can make best use of it.
The application is merely in its incipient phase, and at the current time only works as a study tool for the researchers at the Seismological Laboratory at Berkeley, by attempting to use as many signals from smartphones that have downloaded it. Thanks to the fact that most, if not all newer smartphones these days have an accelerometer sensor built into them, scientists thought of using this fact to the advantage of the people living in particular areas that are prone to seismic activity.
The app has very low storage and battery life requirements and merely keeps track of any motion registered when the phone is left in standby, preferably on a flat surface. While it will continue to function when it senses you in motion, which may result in a false earthquake alarm, this is a grand scale app that will detect false positives according to the zone they are being registered in. The app was designed with the idea that it shouldn’t use more power than your phone would if it were hibernating in mind.
The MyShake app was developed as a citizens’ science experiment with the sole motive of building a global seismic network. Considering that most of the occurrences of earthquakes are too slow to be detected, and it’s mostly done via unreliable channels such as social media, MyShake aims to – hopefully in the near future – become a useful tool in detecting and preventing or at least limiting the casualties following an earthquake.
Scientists working on this project hope to be able to start implementing this the sooner it’s possible, but they do require as many users to pick up the app in the first place. Once a fair number of individuals have it running in the background, people could be notified of incoming earthquakes as soon as 40 seconds before it actually kicks in.
The project hopes to one day be able to help regions with a high risk level of earthquakes such as Nepal. Because there are over 6 million smartphones in the country, if the app ran on at least a portion of them disasters in places such as Kathmandu could be averted.
The app is currently only available on the Google Play Store, as well as the Berkeley website.
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