A new award-winning earthquake app could help prevent deaths during an earthquake, detect survivors, let loved ones know you're ok and coordinate targeted relief efforts.
QuakeUp puts the advanced safety technology used on Japan's high speed bullet trains into the hands of the average person.
The app delivers three alerts if an earthquake occurs. First it tells the user there's a "probable event" on its way. The second, a few seconds later, confirms an "event". Authorities and rescue agencies will then be notified by a third alert from clusters of app users.
In beacon mode, QuakeUp can instantly contact loved ones to let them know you're ok, tells rescuers where you are and provide remote diagnostics. Three very clear keys will appear on the screen of the smartphone in red, yellow and green.
The user presses one of the keys, depending on their situation - red for trapped, yellow for medical relief and green for safe and sound.
For governments and organisations, it could turn chaotic rescue efforts into precision retrievals, as geo-location info instantly sends data to a central server to build an accurate map of who needs rescuing and where.
Major organisations behind the app include UNESCO, Medicins Sans Frontieres and the Davos global risk forum.
Badaoui Rouhban, UNESCO Director of the Disaster Reduction Section, told The Huffington Post: "QuakeUp is a very useful application because it detects primary waves, or P waves, and that has been successful in Japan since the '90s,
"There it stops the high speed bullet trains and the elevators in some important buildings when an earthquake is detected. But more than that, because it also turns into a beacon, that helps us find people after an earthquake and that's something that we didn't have before."
The app recently won the Sophia Antipolis prize at the European Satellite Navigation Competition in Munich on October 19, 2011.
Google has also released Person Finder, an app which acts as a public noticeboard to help find survivors.
Other Earthquake apps include Quake Zone Pro, which crashes and has missed an earthquake according to user reviews on Apple's app store.
Of course, for QuakeUp to work, earthquake victims would have to be carrying a smart phone. In developed economies like Japan where the tsunami and earthquake hit this year, that may be a possibility. In developing nations like Thailand and parts of Turkey, where tsunami and earthquakes have hit, smart phone usage may not be as widespread.
QuakeUp spokesperson Eric Seulliet said: "We will also relay the alert to other means of telecommunications, simple mobile phones and fixed phones. We believe that mobile operators will be our key distribution partners. Our goal is to make our app available for free in poor seismic countries."
Several phone makers such as Nokia, are building phones specifically for emerging economies and some lower-end smart phones are available from £79.
QuakeUp will be available in early 2012.