Earthquake Alert: Warning before shaking using smartphones

Abstract: Today, 100 people get an alert before earthquakes in California.  Recent legislation says everyone should get a warning.  In the future, your phone will detect earthquakes.  In the era of big data and the Internet of Things, how can seismology harness new technologies both for the purpose of science, and to reduce the impact of future disasters around the world?  In this seminar, we will discuss the current status of real-time earthquake information using existing seismic and emerging geodetic networks.  We will also explore on what might be possible in the near future as the quality and number of sensors in consumer electronics increase by orders of magnitude.

About the Speaker: Richard Allen is the Director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, a Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley.  He is an expert in earthquake alerting systems, developing methodologies to detect earthquakes and issue warnings prior to shaking.  His group uses seismic and GPS sensing networks, and is experimenting with the use of smartphones.  Testing of a warning system for the US west coast is currently under way.  Allen’s group also uses geophysical sensing networks to image the internal 3D structure of the Earth and constrain the driving forces responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes and other deformation of the Earth’s surface.  His research has been featured in Science, Nature, Scientific American, the New York Times and dozens of other media outlets around the world.  He has a BA from Cambridge University, a PhD from Princeton University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech.