Mexico City’s government is stuck in a dispute with private technology companies over who can warn residents of an impending earthquake.
Capital authorities issued a decree in August stating that the only entity authorized to send early earthquake alerts was the nonprofit Center for Seismic Instrumentation and Registry, or Cires.
Cires’ 28-year-old system – the oldest earthquake warning service in the world – gives Mexico City residents a one-minute warning of the strongest quakes on the Pacific coast – time people can use to evacuate their homes, schools or office buildings.
The system is widely considered fast and reliable, but that didn’t stop two tech startups, Grillo and SkyAlert, from trying to develop an even better one.
Cires’ system has 96 sensors, most of which are located on the Pacific coast of Mexico, that detect earthquake seismic waves and transmit them by radio frequencies.
If a quake is considered strong enough to cause damage, earthquake alerts are broadcast on television and radio, and an alarm sounds in the capital city of about 12,000 pole-mounted speakers and 20,000 speakers in schools.
On the other hand, Grillo and SkyAlert have taken a more digital approach to earthquake monitoring, sending warnings faster via wireless Internet, processing seismic data using cloud computing, and alerting people to earthquakes coming from mobile apps, Twitter and systems. alarm clock at home.
While startup services have proved popular – SkyAlert has 1.9 million Twitter followers – the Mexico City government says having more than one warning system is confusing to residents and can undermine confidence in early adopters. earthquake alarms.
“If we continue to overly alert people, this will have two effects: we will lose people’s confidence and cause massive panic in places like subway cars or large office buildings,” said Guillermo Ayala, a Civil Protection official responsible for the efforts of early warning of natural disasters in Mexico City.
Two alerts issued by the SkyAlert app in February and August overestimated the magnitude of the earthquakes and caused tens of thousands of people to unnecessarily evacuate their workplaces, he said.
Ayala added that many private companies import cheap earthquake sensors from Asian countries without adapting them for use in Mexico.
Source: reuters
