Google admits 10 million people failed to receive 'take action' alert warning of Turkey earthquake severity
Google has admitted its earthquake early warning system failed to accurately alert 10 million people of the intensity threat of Turkey's deadly natural disaster in 2023.
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Ten million people within 98 miles of the epicentre could have received sent the tech giant's highest level alert - which would have provided up to 35 seconds of warning to find safety.
But just 469 "Take Action" warnings were issued for the initial 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
Around 500,000 people were sent a lower level warning, Google has said, which is designed for "light shaking" and is therefore not considered an urgent alert.
The Android Earthquake Alerts System was launched in August 2020 in collaboration with the US Geological Survey, using phone sensors to detect earthquakes.
It verifies data and sends alerts, which can arrive just seconds before quakes strike.
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An internal investigation at Google revealed that its warning system vastly underestimated the earthquake’s strength, initially ranking it a magnitude of between 4.5 and 4.9.
"We continue to improve the system based on what we learn in each earthquake," a company spokesperson told the BBC.
Google acknowledged the challenges of maintaining a balance between speed and accuracy in a blog post about the alert system.
“One of the trickiest parts of an EEW system is estimating the magnitude of an earthquake in real-time. The magnitude tells us how big the earthquake is, which in turn determines how far the shaking will travel and who needs to be alerted,” it wrote.
“Getting this right is crucial – underestimate, and you might not warn people in danger; overestimate, and you risk sending out false alarms that erode public trust,” it added.
Turkey's president Recep Erdogan described 2023's quake as the worst disaster in the country for almost 100 years.
The earthquake was so powerful it was felt as far away as Cairo. It was centred north of Gaziantep, a Turkish city about 60 miles away from Syria.
In Malatya province, not far from the epicentre, 130 buildings were reported to have collapsed.
Rescuers in the city of Diyarbakir were seen calling for silence as they listened for survivors in a destroyed 11-storey building, one of 15 known to have fallen there.
More than 33,000 people have died in the disaster,