Automated earthquake reconnaissance using smart devices: Potential and hurdles

Low-cost microelectromechanical accelerometers in smart devices have been successfully used to detect the occurrence of earthquakes. However, using smart devices for rapid, automated assessment of seismic damage to buildings is complicated by multiple hurdles. This paper identifies key challenges hindering the use of smart devices for this purpose and describes ongoing research to address them. In particular, the dynamic behavior of a free-standing smart device is presented along with a proposed technique for differentiating between sticking and sliding motion of the device. Discerning between such actions is necessary for accurately computing the motion of the underlying floor. The challenges of using acceleration data captured from smart devices to compute story displacements is presented and ideas proposed to overcome them, including the possibility of aggregating data across numerous smart devices. Computational simulation and experimental data is presented to showcase the ideas offered in the paper.