LONDON: Google has admitted that its early-warning system for earthquakes failed to correctly report the severity of Turkiye’s deadly 2023 earthquake to users, the BBC reported on Monday.
Had the Android software reported the information accurately, at least 10 million people within 98 miles of the epicenter could have been sent a maximum-level alert, giving them up to 35 seconds to find safety.
However, just 469 urgent “take action” warnings were sent ahead of the first 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with at least 500,000 people receiving a lower-level warning.
The lesser message only warns recipients of “light shaking” and does not override the do-not-disturb setting on phones.
The US tech giant previously told the BBC that its warning system had “performed well” during the disaster.
Until its most recent investigation, the BBC had not understood the full extent of the Google software’s failings, it reported.
Google’s software, named Android Earthquake Alerts, is described by the tech giant as a “global safety net.”
It operates in almost 100 countries, many of which lack an official warning system for earthquakes.
AEA is operated by Google, not national governments, and it works on Android devices, which make up the majority of the global phone market over Apple devices.
Similar to the global split in market share, about 70 percent of phones in Turkiye are Android devices.
The February 2023 disaster, which struck southeastern Turkiye, killed more than 55,000 people and injured at least 100,000.
AEA detects the severity of earthquakes by compiling data received from Android mobile phones in a given area.
However, during the Turkiye earthquake, the software failed to accurately detect its severity and send out the necessary number of “take action” warnings, which set off a loud alarm on users’ phones.
A company spokesperson said: “We continue to improve the system based on what we learn in each earthquake. Every earthquake early warning system grapples with the same challenge — tuning algorithms for large-magnitude events.”
As many people were asleep when the first quake struck at 4:17 a.m., a “take action” warning, which overrides silent and do-not-disturb modes, would have been necessary.
Google researchers cited “limitations to the detection algorithms” when discussing the failures in a report published by the Science journal.
The AEA software estimated shaking at 4.5-4.9 on the moment magnitude scale for the first quake, when its real strength was 7.8.
The second quake later in the day saw “take action” alerts sent to 8,158 phones in the area, while the lesser “be aware” message was dispatched to almost 4 million phones.
In later simulations of the first quake, AEA sent 10 million urgent “take action” alerts to users most at risk.
A further 67 million “be aware” alerts were sent to phones located further away from the epicenter of the simulated quake.
Elizabeth Reddy, assistant professor at Colorado School of Mines, told the BBC that she is “really frustrated” that it took so long for the software failings to be revealed.
“We’re not talking about a little event — people died — and we didn’t see a performance of this warning in the way we would like.”
