Today is the anniversary of the horrific earthquakes of 6 Feb 2023 in Turkiye which had the epicenter in the city of Kahramanmaraş resulting in over 50K deaths.
Unfortunately there is not yet a 100% effective early warning system for earthquakes. The most reliable ones are either based on networks of seismic sensors plus historical seismic data. These systems can provide alerts only seconds or a few minutes in advance of an earthquake.
Huge amount of scientific work with AI support is underway. As a result, a system called ShakeAlert for the West Coast of the USA is developed. Yet, here again, the early warning is only seconds to minutes long. Some ChatGPT examples of other work on this matter also include:
Pattern Recognition: AI techniques, such as pattern recognition and anomaly detection are used to analyze historical seismic data and identify precursor patterns associated with earthquakes.
Machine Learning for Seismic Event Prediction: Machine learning models have been trained on seismic data to predict the likelihood of future seismic events in specific regions.
Social Media Monitoring: AI algorithms can analyze social media data in real-time to detect reports of shaking and other earthquake-related information.
Smartphone Apps: There are smartphone apps equipped with AI algorithms that utilize the accelerometer and GPS sensors in smartphones to detect ground shaking caused by earthquakes.
Satellite Imagery Analysis: AI algorithms can analyze satellite imagery to detect ground deformation and other changes in the earth's surface that may be indicative of seismic activity.
AI support is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for early earthquake detection. We need to shift the focus of our educational system to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) and expand our capabilities especially in earth sciences & engineering in order not to experience the horrific experience we had one year ago.