Emergency responders must “see” the effects of an earthquake clearly and rapidly for effective response. This paper presents a novel use of cell phone and information technology to measure ground motion intensity parameters. The phone sensor is an imperfect device and has a limited operational range. Thus, shake table tests were performed to evaluate their reliability as seismic monitoring instruments. Representative handheld devices, either rigidly connected to the table or free to move, measured shaking intensity parameters well. Bias in 5%-damped spectral accelerations measured by phones was less than 0.05 and 0.2 [log(g)] during one-dimensional (1-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) shaking in frequencies ranging from 1 Hz to 10 Hz. They did tend to overestimate the Arias Intensity, but this error declined for stronger motions with larger signal-to-noise ratios. With these ubiquitous measurement devices, a more accurate and rapid portrayal of the damage distribution during an earthquake can be provided.
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Research Article|
May 01, 2014
Evaluating the Reliability of Phones as Seismic Monitoring Instruments
Shideh Dashti, M. EERI;
a
Civil, Env. and Archit. Eng., University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80303
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Jonathan D. Bray, M. EERI;
b
Civil and Env. Eng., University of California, Berkeley, CA 94702
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Jack Reilly;
c
Graduate Student Researcher, Civil and Env. Eng., University of California, Berkeley, CA 94702
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Steven Glaser;
d
Civil and Env. Eng., University of California, Berkeley, CA 94702
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Alexandre Bayen;
e
Civil and Env. Eng., University of California, Berkeley, CA 94702
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Ervasti Mari
f
Graduate Student Researcher, Context-Awareness and Service Interaction, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Oulu, Finland
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Earthquake Spectra (2014) 30 (2): 721–742.
Article history
received:
17 Sep 2011
accepted:
17 Dec 2012
first online:
01 Jun 2020
Citation
Shideh Dashti, Jonathan D. Bray, Jack Reilly, Steven Glaser, Alexandre Bayen, Ervasti Mari; Evaluating the Reliability of Phones as Seismic Monitoring Instruments. Earthquake Spectra 2014;; 30 (2): 721–742. doi: https://doi.org/10.1193/091711EQS229M
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Index Terms/Descriptors
- acceleration
- accelerometers
- damage
- earthquakes
- ground motion
- Imperial Valley earthquake 1979
- information technology
- instruments
- monitoring
- one-dimensional models
- peak ground acceleration
- reliability
- sampling
- seismic intensity
- shaking tables
- strong motion
- testing
- three-dimensional models
- velocity
- Tabas earthquake 1978
- peak ground velocity
- cell phones
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