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Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

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Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#81

Post by po »

ssclafani wrote: post #16
w00kie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan, all phones (even the iPhone) are setup to emit a loud alarm sound when an earthquake warning is sent, whether your phone is on manner mode or not. The alarm sound is very distinctive and the same for all phones as well as all TV channels.

People in Tokyo had a 60 second warning for the 2011 quake. Here's a good translation of the TV alerts from that day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24KfBwkMw_M Phone alert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAAIcqI_0Jk Warning countdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-FMpNBfna8

Right when the guy in that last video said 'sugoi' is about when I said 'oh shit' and crawled under my desk. The amazing thing is that I sat at my desk for about 30 seconds beforehand wondering when this 'rather large' earthquake was going to start to slow down rather than escalate.

After feeling a lot of them, you start to be able to guess their distance and severity based on the P-wave vs S-wave timing of what you feel. It's kind of like counting seconds after seeing lighting until you hear thunder except you have 2 components:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_wave

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#82

Post by peter303 »

adalyac wrote: post #68

So... why is it (geologically) not possible to predict an earthquake earlier than 10 seconds? Anyone know of research trying to beat that?

Its called "early warning". Hopefully sensors near the earthquake will warn humans miles away.

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#83

Post by ctdonath »

rdl wrote: post #2

A few seconds warning seems like it might be kind of useless for humans, especially at 3am, but it would be cool to have this feed into automatic systems to automatically put them in a "safer" state before an earthquake hits. It might even be that 10 false positives a day are worth it to catch one real event, if the "safing" operation is relatively non-disruptive.

Don't underestimate the value of people simply knowing what's happening. There's a big difference (translating to greater safety) between reactions of "WTF?" vs "here it comes!"

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#84

Post by peter303 »

michaelt wrote: post #64
rwg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used to work for a university's geosciences department as a Unix sysadmin/programmer and who worked on two different seismic monitoring networks (one spread across the state for earthquake monitoring and one parked on top of a coal mine), allow me to explain why earthquake monitoring in the United States is largely stuck in the stone age: There's no f---ing money. Back in the '80s, there were a lot of…

How cheap is dirt cheap? $1000? $100? $10? $1? $0.1? Are there established algorithms to determine what seismic data is 'interesting' as opposed to streaming it all in real time (and keeping the radio on) constantly? Why 802.11n instead of cell phone networks - don't you need to be away from traffic vibrations, and hence roads and homes?

Plus telemetry, computers, interpretation people, maintenance people, etc.

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#85

Post by oldspiceman »

I was in an earthquake in Hiroshima a few months ago. When the shaking started I was really confused. If my phone was blaring "earthquake" it would have been helpful.

Also, the warning on my iPhone was in Japanese and it was impossible to copy and paste it into a translator it so it was useless.

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#86

Post by peter303 »

"QuakeFinder" is crowdsourcing earthquake warning system. It uses accelerometers in laptops, tablets, smartphones and special PC boards. The hypothesis is that tens of thousands of networked accelerometers with so-so signals may be useful for seismology, compared to few hundred professional seismometers drilled into bedrock. I saw some promising early studies, but lost track of the project.

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#87

Post by peter303 »

peter303 wrote: post #86

"QuakeFinder" is crowdsourcing earthquake warning system. It uses accelerometers in laptops, tablets, smartphones and special PC boards. The hypothesis is that tens of thousands of networked accelerometers with so-so signals may be useful for seismology, compared to few hundred professional seismometers drilled into bedrock. I saw some promising early studies, but lost track of the project.

The original accelerometers were supposed to save laptop disks before a laptop hit the ground. But then Apple put them into smartphones to measure orientation and location. Their cost has fallen to a few dimes.

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#88

Post by gav »

dredmorbius wrote: post #32
thatswrong0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, amber alerts hijack phones and emit an alarm. Had it happen in the middle of a college lecture.. although some phones received it 5 minutes later than others. I'm guessing this functionality could be used for earthquakes.

I've got to say that my experience with Amber Alerts is strongly negative. For a while they were triggering various alerts (including EBS interruptions on radio and TV), with a frequency that lead me to strongly discount such warnings. Emergencies should be reserved for circumstances in which the recipient of a message can and should take immediate action. An alert is just that: an advisory. Run these was an item in…

After last summer's early morning Amber Alert[1] in NYC, almost everyone I know turned them off.

[1] http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/07/17/early-morning-amber-a...

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#89

Post by fludlight »

rdl wrote: post #2

A few seconds warning seems like it might be kind of useless for humans, especially at 3am, but it would be cool to have this feed into automatic systems to automatically put them in a "safer" state before an earthquake hits. It might even be that 10 false positives a day are worth it to catch one real event, if the "safing" operation is relatively non-disruptive.

There's a Bay Area company with a commercial early warning system that is capable of just that!

http://www.seismicwarning.com/about/overview.php

Re: Earthquake early-warning system gave 10-second alert before Napa quake felt

#90

Post by diminoten »

Sanddancer wrote: post #71
rdl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will CMAS/cell broadcast bypass iOS Amber Alert and Emergency Alert "Government Alert" settings?

No. This would almost assuredly be sent as a level 2 extreme alert. The only alert that can bypass the settings is an alert directly from the president.

Well don't freaking turn off earthquake alerts!
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