Android earthquake warning introduced in Greece and New Zealand

Google announced on April 28 (local time) that it will expand the earthquake warning system using Android and introduce it to Greece and New Zealand.

Earthquake warnings often occur in regions or countries where similar structures are not prepared due to cost issues such as infrastructure maintenance. For this reason, Google announced in 2020 an earthquake detection network that uses Android devices as earthquake detection sensors. In fact, it is being introduced in California, and it is recently introduced in Oregon, and plans to be deployed in Washington in May.

Rescue can send information to the server when it detects shaking such as an earthquake using the accelerometer provided on the Android terminal. Based on this information, it determines whether an earthquake is occurring and sends an alarm to the Google search screen.

In the case of California, the United States, an alarm is sent in connection with the local earthquake warning system ShakeAlert. The systems introduced in Greece and New Zealand are expanded in function to not only collect information, but also send alarms. These two countries are said to be the first to support both earthquake detection and alarm functions. In addition, this alarm can be canceled in the terminal settings.

Although the detailed structure of the alarm is not mentioned, it is possible that it will be widely distributed to other regions if the 3GPP uses standardized ETWS, etc. Related information can be found here.