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Google alert failed to warn people of Turkey earthquake (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/794897

Archived version: https://archive.ph/z5TiN
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230728005143/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66316462

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[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Is this something Google regularly does? Release alerts about earthquakes?

Is it specific to Turkey or global?

[-] redcalcium 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not sure about the alert, but when there was a tsunami in my region, Google Maps show a big fat warning overlay on the map about possible additional tsunamis.

As for earthquake alert. I have several earthquakes in the past few years and never get an alert from Google. Not sure if this is something you must sign up first in order to get it to work though.

Edit: I just checked and it appears my country (Indonesia) is not included in the earthquake alert service, even though Google use Jakarta (Indonesian capital) as an example on how their earthquake alert system works in their blog post announcing the product. Pretty hilarious. The neighboring countries (Malaysia, SG, Timor Leste, etc) are included in the service though. Maybe Google is not confident yet with this service given how often earthquakes happen in this country.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Using Jakarta and then not including Indonesia in their alerts is pretty funny, almost a microcosm of this entire debacle.

Thank you for answering, It's interesting to get these perspectives and anecdotes from other countries.

Does Indonesia have an okay earthquake early detection system aside from Google as far as you know? I'm wondering if Google is tied into research facilities in other countries that allow them to send out these alerts. I'm going to read your article now, which is probably going to have the answers to the questions I just asked, haha

[-] redcalcium 1 points 1 year ago

The national geophysics agency handle earthquake and tsunami monitoring and prediction. They put early warning alarms in tsunami-prone areas to notify people to evacuate if they predict a tsunami will hit the area. Other than that, I never got any kind of earthquake alert on my phone. They do post earthquake and tsunami warning on their website and twitter as they detect them though.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

That makes sense. Google's approach surprises me actually; in that blog announcement you linked, they say they rely on California seismologists, at least for that state, to identify quakes, but in this article it says Google relies specifically on the accelerometers in phones to detect the earthquakes, which seems ridiculous and error prone.

Maybe it's not on a macro scale with millions of phones, but I'd like to read a study, article or explanation on why Google decided to use groups of tiny accelerometers above the surface of the Earth rather than aggregating data from seismic and geologic research centers better suited to to identify earthquakes, and the efficacy of that crowdsourced earthquake detection method.

[-] redcalcium 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The researchers mentioned in the google blog post actually developed another smartphone-based system prior to working with google, called MyShake. You can find various research paper about it if you search "MyShake" in google scholar. Here is one example: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.1501055

I imagine they use a similar system at google since they collaborate with those researchers.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay, that's very interesting, thank you for linking the articles.

So it isn't that the accelerometers or myshake work flawlessly, it's that the earthquake detection systems we have now are so rare in countries that at least crowdsourced earthquake detection using phones is better than the no-warning-at-all that most of the world has.

And since with so many accelerometers, some number of them are going to detect an active earthquake, they're able to relay that information to those potentially soon-to-be affected. That is pretty cool.

Seems like a bad move for Google to announce that alert service without any disclaimers about efficacy knowing that quakes will occur but myshake or whatever equivalent service they're using is only potentially effective before the quake hits.

[-] XTornado@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Idk... Tbh I am not sure what they aree talking about.

Here in Spain and I think applies to Europe aswell the government can sent alerts per region or globally for any reason , Android and iOS handle it but I wouldn't exactly call it a Google alert of course if Google fuck it up it wouldn't work on Android phones. That said until recently at least here it had been barely tested, recently they did tests and finally seems to work fine but initially some phones didn't receive anything, but as far as I know it was ISP provider issues, again not sure how the delivery is done so you get the alert

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

Okay, thanks. I got some quake alerts in Japan before, but I also thought that was a network message, not a specifically Google alert.

I'm just curious why Google is specifically taking the blame here, like if they took responsibility or announced intention to report on future quakes and then dropped the ball or something.

[-] derin@lemmy.beru.co 1 points 1 year ago

Google is not taking any blame. Google prepared an optional Earthquake alert system, it did not work, and they're claiming it did.

No one asked for such a system in the first place from them, and while it's nice they'd go about doing something like that in Earthquake prone parts of the world, if it doesn't work they probably shouldn't get up and start declaring "No no, it totally did work, dunno what those survivors are on about."

Is this something Google regularly does? Release alerts about earthquakes? Is it specific to Turkey or global?

From the article (which you should read, it's quite short):

Google's Android Earthquake Alert System was announced in Turkey in June 2021. The system is operational in dozens of countries around the world. The company describes the ability to send quake alerts as a "core" part of its Android service.

[-] FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Google prepared an optional Earthquake alert system

If you read between the lines of their 'earthquake system', it is obviously polling your phone on a very short and granular basis and pulling movement data, which is something no one seems to be talking about. This is the kind of data collection that pisses me off, and they get away with this by trying to pass this off as some sort of wonderful life saving system that I bet no one even knew they were contributing data to.