Our old smartphones can be the ultimate I.O.T. devices for our smart cities (Part 2).

Earthquakes are unpredictable, come and go fast, and do damage before we could even respond to them. Let's assume a network of old smartphones reconfigured as smart city sensors (As discussed in Part 1 of this series) is distributed all over a city. If such sensors can detect an earthquake just a few seconds before the conventional methods could, then a lot of damage can be prevented. Early warnings can be issued, power could be cut before a broken power line could start a fire, elevators, metros, trains and flight could be halted, and many other precautions could be taken automatically via the internet. Well, this hypothetical vision could be possible in future. If we combine the following technology with it.

An iOS application, called 'iShake', developed by scientists at University of California, Berkley; VTT, Finland; and University of Colorado, Boulder can detect earthquakes using a phone's accelerometer, GPS and other sensors. The app monitors sensor data for a mobile device and checks for vibrations in the seismic range. Data from multiple mobile devices is uploaded to a central server. The server verifies occurrence of a seismic event by comparing the data received from multiple devices spread over a region. If these multiple devices report a same event, the occurrence of that event is verified and a notification or warning is issued to the users. Check this publication out for more details: “iShake: Mobile Phones as Seismic sensors-User Study Findings”