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Earthquake early warnings can be delivered successfully using a small network of off-the-shelf smartphones attached to building baseboards, according to a study conducted in Costa Rica last year.
In his presentation at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) s 2021 Annual Meeting, Ben Brooks of the U.S. Geological Survey said the ASTUTI (Alerta Sismica Temprana Utilizando Teléfonos Inteligentes) network of more than 80 stations performed comparably to scientific-grade warning systems.
During six months of ASTUTI operation, there were 13 earthquakes that caused noticeable shaking in Costa Rica, including in the city of San Jose where the network was deployed. The system was able to detect and alert on five of these earthquakes, Brooks and his colleagues determined when they replayed the seismic events to test their network.