Android users in Brazil were faced with a warning they had never expected on the morning of February 14th. Many people in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have seen that an earthquake of 5.5 magnitude occurred in emergency notifications from their phones. Warnings, the country’s Ubatuba and Baixada Santista regions said a shaking. However, São Paulo Civil Defense officials said in a statement that there was no earthquake record in the region and that any warning was published by the official authorities. Upon this development, Google announced that the Android Earthquake Warning System temporarily deactivated the Android Earthquake Warning System to investigate the cause of the wrong alarm.
The Android Earthquake Warning System was operating in California in 2020 and expanded to many countries over time. The system aims to detect earthquake waves using accelerations in Android devices and send notifications to users before the tremor occurs. Google’s purpose of developing this technology is to minimize damage by providing early warnings to people living in areas where seismic activities are common. However, this incident in Brazil caused question marks on the reliability of the system. Why the wrong alarms are caused and how the system will make it more reliable is one of the critical issues that Google should solve in the coming period.
What’s behind the wrong alarm?
Google spokesman Ed Fernandez told The Verge that the Android Earthquake Warning System is designed as a complementary service, not to replace other or public warning systems. On February 14, the system said that the system perceived seismic signals from the devices on the coast of São Paulo and released an earthquake alarm based on this data. Google announced that it has launched a detailed examination to understand why the wrong alarm is caused, and that it disabled the warning mechanism in Brazil in this process. Fernandez apologizes for the discomfort experienced by users, stressed that Google will continue to develop early warning vehicles.
Preventing false alarms is of great importance for disaster warning systems. Particularly in a region where there is no seismic mobility, the wrong warnings can both create panic and shake the trust of users to the system. Technology companies are of great importance in terms of increasing reliability in disaster warning systems and coordination with public institutions and not being repeated. Google says it will make new improvements to make the system more sensitive in this direction.
Although Google’s earthquake detection system is used by many countries, including Turkey, similar false alarms have occurred before. The accelerator -based work of the system can sometimes cause the collection of wrong data. In order to eliminate such errors, algorithms need to be continuously updated and accuracy rates should be increased. In addition, being in a closer cooperation with regional authorities may play an important role in increasing the accuracy of warnings.
This event in Brazil has revealed how critical technology -oriented disaster warning systems are in terms of sensitivity and accuracy. Technology giants such as Google not only improve such systems, but also have to test the official institutions and cooperate with official institutions. The wrong alarm incident in Brazil showed once again that disaster warning technologies should be taken into consideration not only technical, but also their social dimensions.