IoT-based earthquake early-warning system goes open source
Created by Grillo with support from IBM, USAID, the Clinton Foundation, and Arrow Electronics, OpenEEW is a Code and Response with The Linux Foundation project that features a set of core Grillo EEW components – comprising integrated capabilities to sense, detect, and analyze earthquakes as well as alert communities – that will place effective EEWs to be within the reach of many underserved communities arond the world.
Nearly three billion people globally live with the threat of an earthquake and don’t have access to nation-wide systems which can cost upwards of one billion U.S. dollars, says the organization. OpenEEW wants to help reduce the costs of EEW systems, accelerate their deployments around the world, and has the potential to save many lives.
“For years we have seen that EEWs have only been possible with very significant governmental financing, due to the cost of dedicated infrastructure and development of algorithms,” says Andres Meira, Founder, Grillo. “We expect that OpenEEW will reduce these barriers and work towards a future where everyone who lives in seismically-active areas can feel safe.”
The OpenEEW Project includes several core IoT components: sensor hardware and firmware that can rapidly detect and transmit ground motion; real-time detection systems that can be deployed on various platforms from a Kubernetes cluster to a Raspberry Pi; and applications that allow users to receive alerts on hardware devices, wearables, or mobile apps as quickly as possible. The open source community, say the organizations, aims to help advance earthquake technology by contributing to OpenEEW’s three integrated technology capabilities: deploying sensors, detecting earthquakes, and sending alerts.
Mike Dolan, Senior Vice President and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation says, “The OpenEEW Project represents the very best in technology and in open source. We’re pleased to be able to host and support such an important project and community at the Linux Foundation. The open source community can enable rapid development and deployment of these critical systems across the world.”
For its part, IBM is playing a role supporting Grillo by adding the OpenEEW earthquake technology into the Call for Code deployment pipeline supported by The Linux Foundation. The company has deployed a set of six of Grillo’s earthquake sensor hardware and is conducting tests in Puerto Rico, complementing Grillo’s tools with a new Node-RED dashboard to visualize readings.
IBM is also extending a Docker software version of the detection component that can be deployed to Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift on the IBM Cloud.
Daniel Krook, Chief Technology Officer, Call for Code says, “IBM is thrilled to continue collaborating with Grillo and to contribute to the new open source OpenEEW project with The Linux Foundation. Grillo technology has the potential to help save lives, which is just the type of innovation we look for in Call for Code projects. This is an exciting opportunity for the developer community to help us improve the software, hardware, and global network as an open source project.”
Grillo sensors have generated more than 1TB of data since 2017 in Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica, including information from large earthquakes of magnitudes 6 and 7. Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Oregon are already working with this data, which will enable new machine learning earthquake characterization and detection methods.
The primary aim of the project, say the organizations, is to encourage a variety of people – makers, data scientists, entrepreneurs, seismologists – to build EEWs in places like Nepal, New Zealand, Ecuador, and other seismic regions. This community may also contribute to OpenEEW by advancing the sensor hardware design, improving detection and characterization of earthquakes through machine learning, and creating new methods for delivering alerts to citizens.
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