Earthquake alerts feature on Android smartphones fails: Google failed to warn Turkish residents of deadly tremors

A few years ago, Google added earthquake alerts to its Android operating system. But the recent tragedy in Turkey showed their ineffectiveness.

Details

Google claims that this alert system notifies users of an earthquake a minute before it happens. The system works in dozens of countries around the world. It uses a vast network of Android phones that contain tiny accelerometers and can detect shaking. When smartphones start shaking simultaneously, Google can pinpoint the epicentre and estimate the strength of the quake. This works with earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or higher.

Google says the alerts worked during the massive earthquakes in Turkey in February, which killed more than 50,000 people. The first 7.8-magnitude quake struck in the early morning then, with another strong quake shaking the neighbourhood at lunchtime.

However, BBC journalists conducted an investigation, visited three cities in the earthquake zone, interviewed hundreds of people and found that almost no Android smartphone users would receive alerts at the time. The BBC managed to find a limited number of users who only received an alert before the second earthquake.

Google claims that the system successfully sent alerts to millions of people on 6 February. However, the only evidence was a file of 13 social media posts in which people talked about the alerts. But the authors of the posts are mostly writing about a second earthquake, and some are not even entirely sure what actually happened then.

Source: BBC
Photo: Direct Relief