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

latimes.com

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

#91

Post by peter303 »

waiwai933 wrote: post #4
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.

If the system were relatively reliable, 10 seconds is actually a lot of time. During the day, it's enough time for many people to take cover. During the night, it's enough time to at least get people up and semi-oriented. The other thing to note is that earthquakes are much shorter than most people think, usually about a minute long. 10 seconds is quite a bit of time compared to that.

The 20 seconds of shaking during the Loma Prieta Quake certainly felt like minutes to me!

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

#95

Post by tedunangst »

VMG wrote: post #49
plainOldText wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the delay? The message is not delivered instantly. Plus, such a system would be required to be already scaled up, and stay in that state always, to support sending messages to millions of "subscribers", which would only add additional delay.

If you use broadcast messages, the number of subscribers shouldn't matter. There already exists a system like this in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Mobile_Alert_System > CMAS will allow federal agencies to accept and aggregate alerts from the President of the United States, the National Weather Service (NWS) and emergency operations centers, and send the alerts to participating wireless providers wh…

Fromy experience sitting in a movie theater when a NWS storm alert went off, it took well over a minute for all messages to be delivered.

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

#96

Post by pacofvf »

largote wrote: post #33

Japan, Mexico City, and other seismically active places, have such systems in place and have had them for years. Amazing that California, the epicenter of tech, is just getting on board with this.

yeah, recently the most popular seismic alert app in Mexico City had a false alarm, many buildings were evacuated, but no quake arrived. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=h...

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

#97

Post by toomuchtodo »

idlewords wrote: post #36
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can determine how to subscribe to the push notifications Google and Apple send for their devices specifically for these events, you could have a daemon monitor for the alert and park your spinning disk drive heads. Apps already have access to the data [ http://quakeapp.com/ ].

Spinning disk drive heads? Okay, GRANDPA!

Hey there Whipersnapper (31 is a bit young to be "GRANDPA"). Your SSD in your Mac Book Air may be the "new hotness", but every datacenter in the world that needs a lot of hot storage is using spinning disk (disclaimer: does not apply to low latency applications like AWS EBS, providers like Cloudflare, etc).

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

#98

Post by Albuca »

tzs wrote: post #30
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.

It's an interesting exercise to spend a day or two trying to be aware of what would be the most likely dangers where you are at the moment if you were caught in a good sizes quake right then. I think that most will find that there are many times each day where a few seconds warning would make a difference. Some common situations: • Carrying a heavy item that would hurt you if you dropped it on your foot, or fell down…

I completely agree! A few seconds can certainly save one’s life. The main issue is how to broadcast this warning without suffering from any delay or latency...

For example, elevators in areas prone to earthquakes have sensors installed that can detect the movement of the building [1]. If it sways too far it will automatically move the elevator (up or down) to get the car as far as possible from the heavy heavy counterweight - as there is the possibility that it could break free and smush the car.

[1]Elevator Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ

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

#99

Post by Someone »

gizmo686 wrote: post #50
madeofpalk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS has included this (for Japan at least) since iOS 5[0]. In the US they also do it for AMBER alerts[1]. iPhone has this, not sure about Android though. [0]: http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/21/ios-5-includes-early-earthquak... [1]: http://www.imore.com/amber-alerts-your-iphone-what-they-are-...

Android does as well. (Source, worked in an Android development company, those alerts are really annoying when you are in the same room as a dozen test devices).

You get them on TV, too: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Jap....

That page can use some improvement, as it says:

"It is mandatory for 3G cellular phones that were put on the market after 2007 to receive this service, though overseas manufacturers (Nokia, Apple, HTC, LG, Samsung, etc.) are not supported"

So, is it mandatory, or only for phones made in Japan?

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

#100

Post by Mc_Big_G »

tzs wrote: post #30
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.

It's an interesting exercise to spend a day or two trying to be aware of what would be the most likely dangers where you are at the moment if you were caught in a good sizes quake right then. I think that most will find that there are many times each day where a few seconds warning would make a difference. Some common situations: • Carrying a heavy item that would hurt you if you dropped it on your foot, or fell down…

It made me think what would happen if I were in a strength training week doing a 3-5 rep max. Even with a spotter things might turn out bad.
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