A new version of the earthquake-detecting app called MyShake released on Dec. 14 has thrilled many users. The update was announced by Professor Richard Allen from the University of California and one of the researchers behind the app at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

MyShake, which has been initially launched in February 12, is now available at the Google Play Store with options for notifications of recent quakes. So far, the MyShake app has been downloaded over 200,000 times and set a record of 400,000 tremors worldwide using crowdsourcing data in the past 10 months.

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Within the first 5 months, there are more than 200 earthquakes recorded by the smartphones all over the world, including events in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Morocco, Greece, Nepal, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, and across North America, as reported In the AGU Fall Meeting.

These data showed success of the app's efficacy, from the scientific standpoint that now produces this dataset to the use the detections carried out by devices to issue alerts. 

What does the New Version Offers and How It Operates?

The app can now detect quakes with at least a 2.5 magnitude strenght in the Richter scale.

"We are actually recording very small magnitude earthquakes, down to magnitude 2.5 in places like Oklahoma and California. We're recording the bigger earthquakes - the Ecuador quake in April, M7.8, is the largest so far; and also really deep earthquakes, down to depths of 350km," Allen said as quoted by BBC.

The MyShake app has two components, namely, an Android application running on the users' smartphones to detect earthquake-like motion, and a network detection algorithm to aggregate and analyze the results from multiple smartphones to detect the size and location of the earthquakes. The algorithm has been tailored to distinguish between everyday human motions and those specific to an earthquake.

If the MyShake app is triggered, then it immediately sends a message to a central server through the mobile network. The hub then is tasked to calculate the location and size of the quake. Allen said that an app's new version now sends notifications to users.

In a dense network, the phones closest to the epicenter would detect the approaching shake and then would alert users abroad of the danger heading their way.

This development is a perception that seismic sensitivity of the smartphone accelerometers along with phone density can help in early warning. The early warning only amounts to a few seconds, but, at the very least, that would give people enough time to start to adopt the earthquake safety routine - "drop, cover and hold on."

For now the app is only available for Android; however, an iOS version should be ready for download in spring time.

TagsMyShake app, earthquake, Google Play Store, New Version, Smartphone Apps