Distributed Sensor System for Earthquake Early Warning Based on the Massive Use of Low Cost Accelerometers

Abstract

This paper presents a different and innovative proposal to detect seismic events, a solution that uses smartphones as opportunistic sensor nodes to obtain real-time knowledge of the community environment through a hierarchical architecture, taking advantage of this growing trend. A distributed low-cost network formed of smartphones capable of detect a seismic-peak with a high accuracy by means of converting accelerometers in accelerographs optimizing distributed calculations in these. A server which considers time and spatial analyses not present in another works, making it more precise and customizable, coupling it to the features of the geographical zone, network and resources. Validated by extensive evaluation, the most relevant results have been the improvement in notifications delivery about a seismic-peak 12 seconds earlier in the epicenter zone, the reduced consumption of mobile battery and the reduction in the number of false positives. In addition, this challenge becomes an great opportunity giving people as much as tens of seconds warning before an earthquake occurs in places far from the epicenter.