Google Earthquake Detection – Burning Issues

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CEO OF ALPHABET AND GOOGLE

Scientists used the Richter Scale for many years to measure earthquakes but now largely follow the “moment magnitude scale,” which USGS says is a more accurate measure of size.

There is no proper warning system for Earthquakes.
We only get vague warning like “an Earthquake can occur in this area in the next 100 years or so”

The last big tremor in the Himalayas was the Nepal earthquake of 2015 with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.8, killing nearly 9,000 people and injuring 22,000. The quake flattened large parts of the capital Kathmandu.
The quake was strong enough to shift Kathmandu south by 1.5m, wasn’t a big earthquake like the ones that measure over Mw8. It did, however, set the ground conditions that make a far larger earthquake, a “big one”, more favourable.

Google recently conducted an experiment using its
subsea fiberoptic cables, which showed that it could be useful for earthquake and tsunami warning systems.
ValeyKamalovand Mattia Cantonofrom Google Global Networking posted a blog detailing how Google plans to detect earthquakes. “Last October, an idea came to us: we could detect earthquakes based on spectral signatures—performing a spectral analysis of Stokes parameters to look at frequencies that are typical of earthquakes,” they said in the blog post.

Submarine communications cable
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea.

Millions of kilometersof fibre optic networks already span the globe, operated by governments, telecommunications providers, and technology companies, including Google. “By collaborating with the global subsea cable community, we may be able to improve the world’s ability to detect and research seismic activity around the world,” Google said