Above all, earthquakes often have the most severe consequences in developing countries, due in part to construction and infrastructure issues. Therefore, timely alerts have the potential to help save lives in the communities where earthquakes pose the greatest threat.
EEW systems provide public alerts in countries including Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, but nearly three billion people globally live with the threat of an earthquake and don’t have access to nation-wide systems.
OpenEEW wants to help reduce the costs of EEW systems, accelerate their deployments around the world and has the potential to save many lives.
The OpenEEW Project represents the very best in technology and in open source. We’re pleased to be able to host and support such an important project and community at the Linux Foundation. The open source community can enable rapid development and deployment of these critical systems across the world.
said Mike Dolan, Senior Vice President and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation.
What is an Earthquake Early-Warning (EEW) ?
An earthquake early-warning (EEW) system is a set of capacities to detect and characterize a significant earthquake, estimating the distribution of shaking and distribute the information to communities and organizations, enabling individuals to prepare and act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce the possibility of loss and protect life.
OpenEEW required components
All OpenEEW projects require the following components:
- A network of OpenEEW sensors. You can build your own, buy here, or use someone else’s network.
- A detection system running on a server. You can find instructions for deploying your own here.
- A method for sending alerts. For example, to a Twitter account, via a mobile app, or an IoT device.
The Grillo OpenEEW sensors consist of a high-performance Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometer, a network connector, a loud buzzer, and 3 bright Neopixel LEDS. It has already proven to be as good as seismometers that cost 60x more. For example, the OpenEEW system caught the recent 4.8 Puerto Rico earthquake as it happened.
In conclusion, the open source community aims to help advance earthquake technology by contributing to OpenEEW’s three integrated technology capabilities, deploying sensors, detecting earthquakes and sending alerts.
