Google has harnessed motion sensors on more than 2 billion smartphones to create an earthquake early-warning system that’s as effective as standard seismometers, a new study reveals.
Between 2021 and 2024, the company’s Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system captured more than 11,000 quakes through smartphone accelerometers and issued more than 1,200 alerts to Android users across 98 countries.
This system has led to a tenfold increase in the number of people with access to earthquake alerts, from 250 million in 2019 to 2.5 billion today. The researchers published their findings July 17 in the journal Science.