MyShake: Initial observations from a global smartphone seismic network

• Published in: Geophysical research letters 2016-09, Vol.43 (18), p.9588-9594
• Main Authors: Kong, Qingkai, Allen, Richard M., Schreier, Louis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acceleration; Alzheimer's disease; Archives & records; citizen science; crowdsourcing; Data; Downloading; Earthquakes; Networks; P waves; Public concern; Recording; Seismic activity; Sequencing; smartphone seismic network; Smartphones; Springs; Stores; Waveforms
• ISSN: 0094-8276; 1944-8007
• DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070955

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. Key Points First global seismic network harnessing personal smartphones now providing acceleration waveforms On‐phone earthquake detection algorithm is triggering on magnitude 2.5 and greater earthquakes Two hundred thousand phones have downloaded the MyShake app providing seismic waveform data from six continents