New Delhi: The tech giant Google has acknowledged that its earthquake alert system failed to issue a critical warning ahead of the devastating 2023 earthquake in Turkey, which claimed more than 55,000 lives and injured over 100,000 people. Although the Android Earthquake Alert system was active at the time of the twin quakes on 6 February, it failed to recognise the scale of the threat. Just 469 people received the system’s highest-level Action alert, designed to prompt urgent safety measures, though almost 10 million people were living within 98 miles of the epicentre.
Instead, Google said that around half a million users were issued a lower-level “be aware” notification, intended for milder tremors and far less noticeable. This alert does not override settings like Do Not Disturb and would likely have gone unnoticed by most, especially since the first quake struck at 4:17 am, while many people were sleeping in their homes.
The Android-powered system, which operates on over 70% of smartphones in Turkey, initially led Google to claim that it had performed well, according to some sources. Internal findings, however, revealed the system had dramatically underestimated the quake’s magnitude, assessing it at just 4.5 to 4.9 on the moment magnitude scale, when in fact it was a 7.8. A second significant tremor later that day also saw inaccuracies. This time, Android issued 8,158 Take Action alerts and almost four million Be Aware warnings, still falling short of expectations given the quake’s severity.
Google stated that it will continue to improve the system based on what it learn from each earthquake. The Android Earthquake Alert platform utilises the accelerometers in Android phones to detect ground movement, providing users with precious seconds to react before seismic waves arrive. When a strong quake is detected, the system should trigger the loud Take Action alert, which bypasses all other settings and fills the user’s screen.
This feature was particularly vital in Turkey, where lives could have been saved if the people had received a timely warning before the building collapsed. The Quake zone failed to uncover a single user who had received the more serious alert ahead of the first tremor. Google has since published a study in the journal Science, admitting to limitations of the detection algorithms. Researchers later ran a revised simulation of the 7.8 magnitude quake, which produced a dramatically different result: 10 million Take Action alerts and 67 million Be Aware notifications, suggesting the issue lay in the original software design. Google maintains that its platform is intended to support, not replace, national alert systems. Since the 2023 earthquake, the algorithm has been updated, and the Android Earthquake Alert has been expanded to 98 countries.
