Android phones helping detect potential earthquakes
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Android phones helping detect potential earthquakes
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. The AEA, over the last three years, has expanded earthquake warning coverage from 250 million people to 2.5 billion in 98 countries. The system sends a signal to Google’s earthquake detection server, and the possible location where the shaking occurs. It then analyzes data from phones to confirm that an earthquake is happening, while also estimating its location and magnitude.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways
(NewsNation) — More and more every day, it seems like smartphones can expand our knowledge on everything, including detecting potential earthquakes.
Earthquakes? Yes. Recently, researchers from Google and partner institutions shared results from the Android Earthquake Alerts system. The AEA, over the last three years, has expanded earthquake warning coverage from 250 million people to 2.5 billion in 98 countries.
The system sends a signal to Google’s earthquake detection server, and the possible location where the shaking occurs. It then analyzes data from phones to confirm that an earthquake is happening, while also estimating its location and magnitude. Two alerts are then sent out: BeAware and TakeAction.
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“The system has now detected over 18,000 earthquakes, from small tremors of M1.9 to major quakes reaching M7.8,” according to the research. “For the events significant enough to warn people, alerts were issued for over 2000 earthquakes, culminating in 790 million alerts being sent to phones worldwide.”
“The impact has been a ~10x change in the number of people with access to EEW systems.”
Dating back to March 31, 2024, AEA has issued alerts to Android phones for a total of 1279 events that were detected. Only three were false alarms, with two resulting from thunderstorms.
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Android phones make up more than 70% of the world’s smartphones as of July 2025.
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Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/android-phones-helping-detect-potential-192650482.html