Comment by ricardobayes
9 hours ago
Hmm, why does this needs to be an app and not the built-in alert notification system? Outsourcing critical infrastructure and emergency services to private parties is always a terrible idea.
9 hours ago
Hmm, why does this needs to be an app and not the built-in alert notification system? Outsourcing critical infrastructure and emergency services to private parties is always a terrible idea.
It is built-in, broadcasted by the cell network itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Alerting_Protocol
> Outsourcing critical infrastructure and emergency services to private parties is always a terrible idea.
That would include Apple and Google.
There's things built into iOS and Android and the government does send them; but not for _every_ quake, only for the bigger ones, and if you're close to epicenter.
This wasn't big enough in Tokyo to send out one.
In many countries the authority and capability to send alerts is relatively decentralized and/or they require people to be inserted in the decision loop. Things are this way for policy and jurisdictional reasons. To change it you'd need to redesign the bureaucracy and authority, including many parts that have nothing to do with emergency services. Those changes are not going to happen.
Under these constraints it is effectively impossible to send automated alerts at scale with low latency as demonstrated here. A private app does not operate under such constraints.
In California I was recently alerted to a quake both by iOS (government issued alert) and the MyShakes app.
For major quakes I think over communication is probably warranted.