Brand New School animates Android's earthquake technology

Creative studio Brand New School (BNS) has designed and animated a seamless, eye-catching new spot to highlight Android’s latest stride in seismographic achievements.

The smart, modern style of the animated piece walks us through the basics of how Androids are now able to alert users in California of earthquakes they haven’t yet felt, as well as a new detection technology that uses Android smartphones. Since quakes happen daily around the world, affecting hundreds of millions of people, having a few seconds heads up could potentially save lives.

First, Android collaborated with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) to send earthquake alerts, powered by ShakeAlert, directly to Android devices. Developed by the nation’s leading seismologists, ShakeAlert uses signals from more than 700 seismometers installed across the state by USGS, Cal OES, University of California Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology.

Android has also announced a new crowdsourced approach to detect earthquakes using Android smartphones. All smartphones have tiny accelerometers capable of sensing signals that indicate an earthquake might be happening. If the phone identifies earthquake-like motion, it can now send a signal to Google’s earthquake detection server along with a coarse location of where the shaking occured, acting as mini seismometers. This means that millions of phones are now capable of joining together to form the world’s largest earthquake detection network. Over the coming year, users can expect to see earthquake alerts arriving in more states and countries using this impressive technology.

Says Magnus Hierta, ECD, at BNS, “We appreciate how innovative Google and Android are with their technology. So when they asked us to concept and write scripts to help launch the new features we were overjoyed. It’s always fulfilling to use our creative skills for the greater good. Being able to shepherd the work from concept to finish allowed us to innovate solutions of our own to help communicate this new feature in a digestible and engaging way.”