Real time earthquake alerts on your smartphone are possible thanks to Earthquake Network. Started in 2012, Earthquake Network is a citizen science project implementing a crowdsourced Earthquake Early Warning system based on networks of smartphones. More than 8 million people took part in the Earthquake Network project and the network has sent more than 4,600 real time earthquake alerts. In many seismic countries, Earthquake Network is the only alert system open to the public. Since 2019, thanks to the participation of the University of Bergamo in the TURNkey and RISE projects funded by the European Commission, data provided by Earthquake Network are studied to develop new seismic risk mitigation systems for Europe.
To be part of the network and to receive alerts please install the Earthquake Network app.
The idea is to use the accelerometer on-board smartphones to detect in real-time the shaking induced by an earthquake. When an earthquake is detected, an alert is sent to all the smartphones within the affected area. If you are not too close to the epicenter, you can receive the alert in advance and you can take cover before you are reached by the damaging waves of the earthquake.
For all the technical details please visit the Science section, the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America journal or the Wikipedia page of the project.
