I learned something new last week that caught my eye. Maybe this new information will be important to you also.

There’s a smartphone app that turns your phone into an earthquake sensor. There is potential with this to save lives which makes it a great app to have. Even though earthquakes in our region aren’t as prevalent as in other parts of the world, this app is an attention getter for anyone who wants to be aware of earthquakes when they shake us all.

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Deutsche Telekom AG have built an app that uses a smartphone’s motion sensor to feel earthquakes. The app, called MyShake, records the time and amplitude of a tremor and sends its data and the phone’s location to Berkeley’s seismological lab for analysis.

MyShake can be downloaded for free from Google’s Play store, and an
iPhone app is also planned. (Photo: MyShake.Berkeley.edu)

The more people who use the app, the better the system will work. The goal is to create a global seismic network – a collective seismograph if you will – that will eventually warn users ahead of time of incoming jolts from far-away quakes.

“For many earthquake-prone developing countries such as Nepal or Peru, MyShake could warn potentially affected persons valuable seconds earlier and, ideally, safe lives,” Deutsche Telekom said in a statement. “These countries currently have either only a sparse ground-based seismic network or early warning system, or none at all – but do have millions of smartphone users.”

While a phone’s motion sensor, or accelerometer, is less sensitive than an in-ground sensometer, it can record earthquakes above a magnitude of 5 within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). And the sheer number of potential users makes up for a phone’s insensitivity, with an estimated 16 million smartphones in California and about 1 billion worldwide. MyShake can be downloaded for free from Google’s Play store, and an iPhone app is also planned, Deutsche Telekom said.

As many of our customers know, we offer earthquake insurance as an ‘add-on’ option to your home insurance policy. If you have an interest, let us know. We would be glad to price-quote the addition for you. In the meantime, MyShake could help you be aware when any shaking is going on close by.

As always, we appreciate you reading our blog. It’s our way of going beyond just insuring folks! It gives us a personal way to help our readers understand all things related to insurance. As I have often said – we’re in the insurance education business as much as we are working hard to properly insure our customers. We hope you learn something as you read these and will continue to. Of course, you can pass these along to others by simply linking them to Facebook or other social media outlets. Checkout the SHARE buttons at the top right of this article that easily assists you in posting this and other blog articles to other places. We would appreciate that also.

(Portions of this blog article taken from a PROPERTYCASUALTY360.com article by Stefan Nicola – February 15, 2016)