MyShake: Initial observations from a global smartphone seismic network

Abstract

MyShake is a global smartphone seismic network that harnesses the power of crowdsourcing. In the first 6 months since the release of the MyShake app, there were almost 200,000 downloads. On a typical day about 8000 phones provide acceleration waveform data to the MyShake archive. The on‐phone app can detect and trigger on P waves and is capable of recording magnitude 2.5 and larger events. More than 200 seismic events have been recorded so far, including events in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, and across North America. The largest number of waveforms from a single earthquake to date comes from the M5.2 Borrego Springs earthquake in Southern California, for which MyShake collected 103 useful three‐component waveforms. The network continues to grow with new downloads from the Google Play store everyday and expands rapidly when public interest in earthquakes peaks such as during an earthquake sequence.

Earthquake Early Warning and Beyond

“…We can see that the MyShake seismic network has already reached global coverage, and new users can join the network easily by downloading the MyShake app. Initial observations from the MyShake users show very promising results, indicating that the data collected from the phones are capable of supporting various seismological applications [16]. Within the first two and half years, the MyShake network has detected around 900 earthquakes globally with magnitudes ranging from M1.6 to M7.8.…”

“…Specifically, [17,19] described the initial development of the system and the design of the core ANN algorithm. [16] and [15] reported some seismological observations and the potential use of MyShake to monitor the health of buildings. [18] described the machine learning algorithms used in the MyShake system.…”

MyShake: Using Human-Centered Design Methods to Promote Engagement in a Smartphone-Based Global Seismic Network

“…Recordings from cell phones can be used to build a scalable earthquake early warning system around the world, which is a key goal of the MyShake global network. Kong et al (2016a) report on initial observations from MyShake recorded waveforms and compare them with the nearby seismic stations. The Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) values show the expected attenuation trend with distance from an earthquake, though the amplitude of MyShake recordings are on average twice the observations of traditional seismic stations.…”

“…MyShake also employs the GPS to accurately pinpoint location. An on-board patented artificial neural network (ANN) created by the researchers at the Berkeley Seismology Lab determines whether or not recorded motions are produced by an earthquake or by normal human activity (Kong et al, 2016a). The ANN remains in a quiescent phase until the accelerometer indicates the phone has been stationary for a defined period of time.…”

“…This paper does not cover technical details about MyShake. Details of the network structure and app architecture are presented by Kong et al (2016b), and a summary of data quality and observables from the existing network can be found in Kong et al (2016a). Application of the data to building monitoring is covered in Kong et al (2018a) and an overview of the machine learning components of the entire MyShake system are in Kong et al (2018c).…”