title: 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 early warning (EEW) provides seconds to minutes 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 from other 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 and magnitude 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 regions with traditional networks and could provide the only EEW capability in regions without. In addition, the seismic waveforms recorded could be used to deliver rapid microseism maps, study impacts on buildings, and possibly image shallow earth structure and earthquake rupture kinematics.
authors.affiliation: Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Qingkai
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4293-9772
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.affiliation: Deutsche Telekom Silicon Valley Innovation Laboratories, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
authors.forename: Louis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schreier
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA.
authors.forename: Young-Woo
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Kwon
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004190:Disasters / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055866:Earthquakes / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D018570:Risk Assessment; D000068997:Smartphone / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014505:Urban Population
keywords: Crowdsourcing; citizen science; earthquake early warning; smartphone seismic networks