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August 11, 2020 Smartphones could give thousands of people precious seconds ahead in the event of an earthquake. The experimentation of a detection and warning system based on the accelerometers of smartphones with the Android operating system, by Google, will be tested for the first time in California.  

The use of sensors to detect movements generated by seismic waves is nothing new: they have long been inserted in the subsoil and in the structures of buildings. If, on the other hand, the accelerometer-based system proves effective, the earthquake warning could simultaneously reach many more people. The phone would send its location to Google, allowing the algorithms to triangulate the epicenter and estimate the magnitude with a few hundred reports, said program chief engineer Marc Stogaitis.

Accelerometers - sensors that measure the direction and strength of movement - primarily serve to determine whether a user is holding the phone horizontally or vertically. Google studied the time series of movements detected by accelerometers during earthquakes and found that they could provide, in some cases, up to a minute's notice.

The experts in seismology interviewed by Google believe that transforming smartphones into mini-seismographs can represent an important step forward, net of possible errors. More than 2.5 billion devices use the Android operating system.