The Swedish company MedDay is consulting with scientists in the geological science department at Uppsala University about developing a tsunami warning system adapted for mobile phone use.
MedDay draws on its experience from a bird flu alert system which sends warning messages over mobile phones.
“We lack resources to man our seismographs 24 hours a day,” says Reynir Bödvarsson, head of the seismographical station network at Uppsala University´s geological sceince department. ”But we registered the boxing day earthquake only eleven minutes after it occurred, almost an hour before the first warning reached local authorities in the region.”
If RegPoint, as the alarm system is called, had been connected to Uppsala, could thousands of people have been warned over their mobile phones, claims MedDay and adds that there are no capacity limitations in the system because it connects to local mobile phone operator’s networks and is thus capable of transmitting several million messages simultaneously.
MedDay and the university are now investigating how to proceed with the idea to tailor the system for tsunami alert purposes.
