In 2010, Xiaomi developed an earthquake alarm to its custom MIUI ROM for phones and smart TVs. A collaboration with Chengdu High-tech Disaster Mitigation Institute enabled the feature. Since November 2019, the Tech giant has provided data showing that it has successfully warned of 35 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 and higher, with a total of 12.64 million warning messages delivered.
Xiaomi may be on its way to introducing yet another disaster early warning system, as is its typical fashion The company has promised a technology that will allow its mobile phones to not only receive but also monitor earthquake warnings. The function would involve pairing its devices with a couple of sensors that would continuously monitor the earth's seismic activity.
This technology not only lowers the cost of earthquake monitoring but also increases the number of monitoring hubs making the national earthquake monitoring and early warning network more accurate.
With time, the new functionality will be available on all Xiaomi phones. Users of Mi phones running the MIUI 12.5 development version, on the other hand, can apply to join the earthquake monitoring volunteers by going to Mobile Phone Manager-Earthquake Early Warning.
The Chinese tech giant remarked that when the mobile phone's sensor detects vibration, it uses edge computing to determine whether it is earthquake signals. If this is true, it will send the information to the early warning centre, which will calculate and decide whether an earthquake actually occurred using data from various mobile phones and earthquake data AI.
If an earthquake is detected, the magnitude, epicentre location, and time of the quake will be rapidly calculated, and warning messages will be sent to those who are affected in the surrounding area.
The number of earthquake monitors can be considerably expanded if every Xiaomi mobile phone becomes an earthquake monitor. As a result, locations without traditional earthquake monitors will be able to get early warning information, and the national earthquake monitoring and early warning network will be able to cover a wider demographic.
The functionality will not compromise users' privacy in any way, as the company stated that it will employ "differential privacy" to anonymously handle all user data throughout the process, ensuring user privacy.
We don't expect this technology to be available on Xiaomi phones sold outside of China.
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