Google VS earthquake

Although technology is advanced today, it is still very difficult if not impossible to predict the arrival of an earthquake.
There are some projects relating to particular very seismic areas such as California that try to arrive at a forecast of even a few seconds through multiple sensors.

The news these days is that Google is also trying to use Android phones as sensors.
Using the accelerometer (the sensor used by the phone among other things to understand if the screen is turned) and based on some studies on seismic waves it is possible to predict a seismic event up to about 2 seconds earlier in the epicenter, seconds which increase as you go away.

The strength of this technology is that it has data from millions of phones all over the world, in fact it is an operating system update, not an app that the user can decide to install. In some cases, early warning can truly save lives, although I would prefer not to need it.

Stefano Ravizza
NP August / September 2020