A few seconds warning seems like it might be kind of useless for humans, especially at 3am, but it would be cool to have this feed into automatic systems to automatically put them in a "safer" state before an earthquake hits. It might even be that 10 false positives a day are worth it to catch one real event, if the "safing" operation is relatively non-disruptive.
It's an interesting exercise to spend a day or two trying to be aware of what would be the most likely dangers where you are at the moment if you were caught in a good sizes quake right then.
I think that most will find that there are many times each day where a few seconds warning would make a difference. Some common situations:
• Carrying a heavy item that would hurt you if you dropped it on your foot, or fell down and it landed on you.
• Sitting near a shelf with something heavy on it (surround speaker, for example).
• Many things in the kitchen: carrying hot liquid; hot liquid on the stove; using a knife.
• Using power tools: soldering; drilling; sawing.
• Juggling torches.
Just a couple seconds warning can give you time to put down a heavy object, move from where your speaker will fall on you or prepare to deflect it, get out of the way of potential spills in the kitchen, put down the knife, stop your power tools, and stop juggling.
I attended a talk by one of the developers of this system, and since earthquake warnings are so short (tens of seconds), it's unlikely that traditional alert mechanisms can be delivered to the general public. As such, the primary consumers of the device will be places like nuclear power plants and major industrial operators who are willing to install special alarms.
The other example he gave was giving doctors performing surgery time to step away from the patient, so that they dont turn things into a real life game of surgeon simulator, an example I personally find to be extremely horrifying and nightmare inducing.
Cell phone app. Setup something like the reverse-911 system, or even just a downloadable app that can wake your phone from sleep and use the speakers to alert its carrier that an earthquake is on the way.
How about the delay? The message is not delivered instantly. Plus, such a system would be required to be already scaled up, and stay in that state always, to support sending messages to millions of "subscribers", which would only add additional delay.
> CMAS will allow federal agencies to accept and aggregate alerts from the President of the United States, the National Weather Service (NWS) and emergency operations centers, and send the alerts to participating wireless providers who will distribute the alerts to their customers with compatible devices via Cell Broadcast, a technology similar to SMS text messages that simultaneously delivers messages to all phones using a cell tower instead of individual recipients.[3][4]
No. This would almost assuredly be sent as a level 2 extreme alert. The only alert that can bypass the settings is an alert directly from the president.
If earthquake alerts are their own category, I probably won't. However, if they're lumped in with much more common events (thunderstorm! non-custodial parent spending time with child!) that I don't care to hear, then I will.
Android does as well. (Source, worked in an Android development company, those alerts are really annoying when you are in the same room as a dozen test devices).
"It is mandatory for 3G cellular phones that were put on the market after 2007 to receive this service, though overseas manufacturers (Nokia, Apple, HTC, LG, Samsung, etc.) are not supported"
So, is it mandatory, or only for phones made in Japan?
I completely agree! A few seconds can certainly save one’s life. The main issue is how to broadcast this warning without suffering from any delay or latency...
For example, elevators in areas prone to earthquakes have sensors installed that can detect the movement of the building [1]. If it sways too far it will automatically move the elevator (up or down) to get the car as far as possible from the heavy heavy counterweight - as there is the possibility that it could break free and smush the car.
Consider the fact that Japan is swarming with high-speed trains, but there were no derailments during the huge Tōhoku quake.
The biggest advantage of warning is fire prevention, as gas lines can shut automatically. But I also wouldn't mind a little server interrupt telling my machines to get into a consistent state since they're about to be knocked offline.
If you can determine how to subscribe to the push notifications Google and Apple send for their devices specifically for these events, you could have a daemon monitor for the alert and park your spinning disk drive heads.
Hey there Whipersnapper (31 is a bit young to be "GRANDPA"). Your SSD in your Mac Book Air may be the "new hotness", but every datacenter in the world that needs a lot of hot storage is using spinning disk (disclaimer: does not apply to low latency applications like AWS EBS, providers like Cloudflare, etc).
> A few seconds warning seems like it might be kind of useless for humans [...]
One of the things mentioned on the USGS site is doctors in surgery. Knowing even a couple of seconds in advance that you should pause the procedure could save lives.
Yep - kind of like active hard-drive protection [0].
I could imagine stop-lights turning red at major intersections, elevators stopping and opening at the nearest floor, BART trains coming to a stop, etc.
If the system were relatively reliable, 10 seconds is actually a lot of time. During the day, it's enough time for many people to take cover. During the night, it's enough time to at least get people up and semi-oriented.
The other thing to note is that earthquakes are much shorter than most people think, usually about a minute long. 10 seconds is quite a bit of time compared to that.
I think the point is that 10 seconds of warning really translates to 0-5 seconds of warning given the time it takes to send out the warning (text, radio, emergency broadcast). Then add in time to wake and get oriented.
Unlikely. The Bay Area is an area of "tectonic activity" (as evidenced by Loma Prieta in 1989, and now the the 6.0 from yesterday) - but I"m willing to wager fewer than 1 in a thousand people anchor their fridge to the wall.
Hot water heaters and book cases - Yes. But not fridges. They rarely tip over in earthquakes.
I'm not really afraid of what happens if my fridge tips over, either. I spend very little time in front of the fridge, and never when anything but fully alert. If the room started shaking, I could probably step a little to the left or to the right and be fine. I'm probably more concerned about all the glasses on high shelves, or the knives, etc., in terms of floor hazards after the quake.
The thing which terrifies me is that I'm in a 1971-construction building with a soft story, in a city with a defective police department. My car is parked in that soft story. Assuming the entire building doesn't collapse and kill me, there's nothing above my-standing-height except one projector, which even from projector-height, would be unlikely to kill me. But I'd probably have fallen to my death and been crushed by huge volumes of unreinforced masonry before that.
(Please, please, if there's going to be an earthquake while I'm in the Bay Area, let it happened while I'm in the office, or even better, in a datacenter. The new office is being fully retrofitted right now, so it should be pretty good.)
But there's no way to reliably get information to all people within ten seconds. Even if a text message alert was sent out as soon as the system was triggered, that time, plus the time for even the most phone-ready people to pull out their phone and do the necessary steps to read a message leads to basically no warning at all.
In Japan, all phones (even the iPhone) are setup to emit a loud alarm sound when an earthquake warning is sent, whether your phone is on manner mode or not. The alarm sound is very distinctive and the same for all phones as well as all TV channels.
Right when the guy in that last video said 'sugoi' is about when I said 'oh shit' and crawled under my desk. The amazing thing is that I sat at my desk for about 30 seconds beforehand wondering when this 'rather large' earthquake was going to start to slow down rather than escalate.
After feeling a lot of them, you start to be able to guess their distance and severity based on the P-wave vs S-wave timing of what you feel. It's kind of like counting seconds after seeing lighting until you hear thunder except you have 2 components:
Here's a matrix of the 6 big TV channels. Top left is the national broadcast (of the public broadcaster, NHK), the others are local commercial Tokyo broadcasts. The earthquake was initially not estimated to be big enough to affect Tokyo so Tokyo stations didn't automatically broadcast the initial alert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOrAwvJLKxo
It says something about Japan that the sound is kind of sweet. In the US, we have the Amber Alert sound specially hand-crafted to make you think the world is ending.
In the US, amber alerts hijack phones and emit an alarm. Had it happen in the middle of a college lecture.. although some phones received it 5 minutes later than others. I'm guessing this functionality could be used for earthquakes.
I've got to say that my experience with Amber Alerts is strongly negative.
For a while they were triggering various alerts (including EBS interruptions on radio and TV), with a frequency that lead me to strongly discount such warnings.
Emergencies should be reserved for circumstances in which the recipient of a message can and should take immediate action. An alert is just that: an advisory. Run these was an item in normal newscasts, or in advisory systems (including if you absolutely must, highway signage). But not distracting people.
The fact that, at least in my recollection, a huge number of Amber Alerts appear to involve immediate family / partner situations (boyfriend/girlfriend, other parent, husband/wife, modulo estrangement). Most seem to resolve reasonably well. And I'm not sure that a full-on aggressive response benefits the situation. Again, that's a recollection and personal perception. But overall, I'm underimpressed by the system.
This seems to have improved somewhat in more recent years.
And yet, at least once, the alert on the phone specifically (rather than a newscast or highway signage) appears to have saved at least one life[0]. Of course, we don't know what would have happened, and it did wake up the whole state, too. But I think the argument in favor is that the probability of success for these searches decreases quickly with time, so there is substantial value in getting word out quickly.
The argument isn't whether the alert alerts, but whether over-usage conditions people to ignore the alert.
If this kind of usage of the alerting system causes people to ignore alerts in the middle of the night, and then an earthquake happens, then the system is counter-effective. Based solely on the situation as laid out in the article, the people deciding on using the system in this case should be strongly reprimanded for squandering trust like that.
If using the system in such cases is actually desirable, a lower tier of alerts that doesn't make more noise than a regular text message should be introduced. It's not like someone sound asleep at 1am is going to go searching for a Suburban just because they were woken up. Indeed, the car was only found by someone going about their regular business in the morning.
Also, the system can't really be said to have saved one life in this case - it probably contributed to reuniting the child with its parent quicker, but there's no evidence suggested in the article that the kid would have died if not for the alerting system.
There's a discussion on reddit at the moment concerning cycling, where one of the interesting assertions of recent research is that overall public health would benefit from no helmet laws and more bike lanes.
That is: adults are less likely to ride bikes if they're required to wear a helmet (as I understand, laws for minors would remain), but the health benefits of increased activity and cycling outweigh the risks of injury.
I'm open to arguments over flawed methodology or other issues, but the point is that sometimes there are apparent safety measures that, when taken, increase risks. Another case in point would be TSA airport security measures, which by encouraging more trips to be made by automobile, have arguably increased overall death risks to travelers (as reported by Bruce Schneier and others). I'm among those who've either foregone or elected to drive on journeys rather than fly, even aware of the risks (and, frankly, if you've got the time, it's often far more interesting and enjoyable).
The US Department of Justice reports 685 successful recoveries, though it doesn't list the number of activations of the Amber Alert system, nor whether or not the recoveries were materially aided by the system.
According to that, there had been 190 activations (fewer than I'd thought), 77 were parental abductions (about 35%), acquaintances 55, strangers, 37. Another 355 alert requests were made but not activated.
The Wikipedia article on the Amber Alert system raises a number of the points I've mentioned above:
"A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the Department of Justice's criteria. Fully 50% (117 alerts) were categorized by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as being "family abductions", very often a parent involved in a custody dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted at all, but were lost, ran away, involved in family misunderstandings (for example, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where police did not know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an abduction."
On stranger abductions:
"Seventy of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 (30%) were actually children taken by strangers or who were unlawfully travelling with adults other than their legal guardians."
Regarding effectiveness:
"Some outside scholars examining the system in depth disagree with the "official" results.[60][61][62] A team led by University of Nevada criminologist Timothy Griffin looked at hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2006 and found that AMBER Alerts actually played little apparent role in the eventual return of abducted children. Furthermore, AMBER Alerts tended to be 'successful' in relatively mundane abductions, such as when the child was taken by a noncustodial parent or other family member. There was little evidence that AMBER Alerts routinely 'saved lives'"
There are further concerns with AA as "crime prevention theater" (much as the TSA is seen as homeland security theater), of the "crying wolf" effect, over 4 a.m. cell-phone alerts, over use where the Alert criteria aren't met, of distraction effects of highway signage especially during rush hour, and more.
Contrasting AA with a widespread and imminent natural disaster or civil emergency alert:
In the case of an Amber Alert, a very small number of individuals are likely to be in a position to assist at all, let alone actually assist, in a recovery. Risking "alert fatigue" should be a very real concern. I am not opposed to forms of widespread message propagation, but these should be done through nonemergency channels (e.g., a news or other scheduled statement or alert), rather than by distracting drivers, waking sleeping people, or interrupting people engaged in other activities, the vast majority of whom have no bearing on the outcome of the incident.
In the case of an earthquake, tornado warning, tsunami alert, flash flood, landslide, wildfire, or similar event, people over a widespread area have seconds or minutes to act and take measures which will directly and materially benefit them by saving lives, preventing or reducing injury, and reducing harm or damage to property.
To be honest, that exact alert is what made me turn amber alerts off in Android.. I live so far from Charlotte that there is no way it might be relevant..
That system is really poorly implemented in the US. I've received alerts for things happening in different states and haven't received alerts for things I know are happening in the county.
I would expect if they used it for earthquakes as it is I would get the alert on the East Coast and someone in California wouldn't.
It's actually not a japanese-specific setup. I got a japanese earthquake alert on my french Nexus 4. (and it was, fortunately, a false alarm; rare event, but that happens)
> But there's no way to reliably get information to all people within ten seconds.
This is HN, right? Come on folks. If I can send packs transcontinental and back in 100ms, then you can get a message out to the people of CA in under 10s. This is not a moon shot project. Our entire telecomm infrastructure operates in ms increments, not 10s increments.
Now, if only the SF startups could work on something useful like this, rather than yet another cat video app. You could even show ads for home repair companies and insurance adjusters during the warning/quake.
In tornado country, there are loud outdoor sirens that go off when a tornado is sighted. The sirens are audible to anyone indoors or out, and they are tested at a given time once a month.
Amber Alerts are pushed to my phone and I do not have to do anything to see them or know they are there. They sound an alarm tone and change the display. I also receive tornado warnings this way.
> A few seconds warning seems like it might be kind of useless for humans
Ten seconds is plenty for me to drop under my work desk, or at least be well on the way. Similarly my daughter's school class. That can make a big difference to survivial rates.
The first application that comes to mind is vehicles. Picture a car driving at full speed, or an airplane about to land. With a 10 second early warning, at the very least the driver/pilot could receive a clear visual and audible alert instructing it to slow down / abort approach, brace for impact, alert passengers, etc.
Also: operators of heavy or dangerous machinery, surgeons, construction workers...
"According to Higashi, only one train, running under test without passengers, derailed that day, when it was approaching Sendai, before it was immediately halted by the emergency braking."
Don't underestimate the value of people simply knowing what's happening. There's a big difference (translating to greater safety) between reactions of "WTF?" vs "here it comes!"
Seriously, it should be a functionality of Yo. As of now you can subscribe to channels already, I think there should also be default channels that all users are subscribed to, for events that happens a few times a year and less.
In Japan, the alert is accompanied with magnitude and epicenter information. This alert seems to be also distributed by broadcast SMS. Apps on the phone determine if it crosses a threshold to alert or not. Even after the shaking has started, it's good to know just how strong it will be. So if it's 3am, I know whether I could ignore or I should do checks.
Excellent point. It could, for example, switch off gas lines at various checkpoints. I wonder how that might that affect appliances? For example, if a hot water heater is heating and the flame goes out, but then the gas comes back on is the heater smart enough to re-ignite the gas (or shut it off)?
A thermocouple which won't shut off the gas immediately. However (targeting this mostly at GP), the amount of gas which will leak should be absolutely minimal and will soon disperse into nonignitability.
OP seems to be talking about "automated systems". A harddisk might stop reading/writing for moment and park the heads to avoid a head-crash and things like that.
