Here's how your phone could save your life if an earthquake hits

USA Today

5 days ago

A worldwide Android smartphone-based earthquake detection and early warning system can detect seismic activity in real time
Could your smartphone save your life? If an earthquake is occurring, it just might.
A worldwide Android smartphone-based earthquake detection and early warning system can detect seismic activity in real time – and deliver life-saving alerts that are just as effective as that of traditional seismic networks, according to a new study published July 17 in the journal Science.
The Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system, which was developed by engineers at Google and the University of California-Berkeley, uses the phones' sensors to detect seismic activity and deliver early-warning alerts to users before dangerous shaking begins.
"Earthquakes are a constant threat to communities around the globe," wrote Google engineer Mark Stogaitis on a Google blog post about the new study. "While we've gotten good at knowing where they're likely to strike, we still face devastating consequences when they do."
"What if we could give people a few precious seconds of warning before the shaking starts? Those seconds can be enough time to get off a ladder, move away from dangerous objects and take cover," he wrote.
Safety: This is what to do before, during and after an earthquake
Indeed, the widespread use of smartphones globally has created a powerful platform for sensing and delivering earthquake alerts, according to a statement from Science. "While the sensors in smartphones are not as precise as those in traditional seismic stations, they are still capable of detecting ground shaking during significant earthquakes."
How does it work?
According to Google, "the accelerometer in an Android phone, the same sensor that flips the screen when it's turned sideways, can also detect the ground shaking from an earthquake. If a stationary phone detects the initial, faster-moving 'P-wave' of an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location of where the shaking occurred."
The system then quickly analyzes data from many phones to confirm that an earthquake is happening and estimate its location and magnitude. The goal is to warn as many people as possible before the slower, more damaging "S-wave" of an earthquake reaches them.
The system sends out two types of alerts:
How successful has it been?
According to Google, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Of the more than 1.5 million people who responded to a survey, 85% found the alerts to be "very helpful."
Overall, during its first three years of operation (2021-2024), the AEA system detected an average of 312 earthquakes per month, spanning magnitudes from M 1.9 to a maximum of M 7.8 across 98 countries, according to the study.
"The system has now detected over 18,000 earthquakes, from small tremors of M1.9 to major quakes reaching M7.8," Stogaitis wrote. "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.
This included more than half-a-million people in Turkey and Syria who received an alert on February 6, 2023, just before a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck. according to a Phys.org report.
The impact has been a greater than tenfold change in the number of people with access to earthquake early warning systems. "In 2019, only about 250 million people had access. Today, thanks in large part to the Android system, that number has increased to 2.5 billion," he said.
As an example, in the magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Turkey in April 2025, the first alert was issued 8 seconds after the earthquake began. People who experienced moderate to strong shaking had a warning time of a few to 20 seconds. In this event, over 16 million alerts were delivered.
'Comparable to established national systems'
Stogaitis concluded that "what's most exciting is that our system is constantly learning and improving... In the future, this system could not only provide warnings but also deliver rapid post-earthquake information to emergency responders, helping them to quickly assess the areas most in need."
According to the study, "AEA demonstrates that globally distributed smartphones can be used to detect earthquakes and issue warnings at scale with an effectiveness comparable to established national systems. (However,) large earthquakes remain the most important and challenging for all earthquake early warning systems."