Earthquakes still arrive without warning. That is the hard truth scientists have been forced to accept, despite a decade of advances in artificial intelligence, satellite monitoring and dense seismic networks.
We are getting better at detecting earthquakes once they start. We are now better at estimating the damage they may cause. But we still can’t predict the exact time, place and size of a future earthquake.
That may sound like failure. It is not. Over the past ten years, earthquake research has become more realistic. Instead of chasing precise prediction, scientists have focused on what can actually save lives: better risk forecasting, faster detection and earthquake early warning systems that can give people a few seconds to act before the strongest shaking arrives.
A few seconds may not sound like much. In an earthquake, it can be the difference between standing under falling glass and getting under a sturdy table.
What is an early warning system?
Early warning systems work by detecting the first fast-moving seismic waves after a fault starts to rupture. These waves are less damaging than the stronger shaking that follows. Because electronic signals travel faster than seismic waves through the ground, alerts can sometimes reach people first. In countries prone to earthquakes such as Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and the US, even a warning of five to 20 seconds has been shown to reduce injuries and help protect infrastructure.
But the last decade has also shown the limits of these systems. They do not work equally well for everyone. People close to the epicentre may get little warning or none at all, because the earthquake waves arrive before the alert can be processed and sent. This is sometimes called the blind zone. It is not a design flaw. It is a physical limit.
Another lesson is that large earthquakes are often more complex than expected. They do not always rupture in one clean break. Some jump across several fault segments or trigger cascading ruptures. That makes it harder to estimate the size of the event quickly and can reduce the accuracy of early warnings in the first crucial seconds. The earthquake may still be unfolding while the warning system is trying to understand it.
Artificial intelligence is helping with this. Deep learning systems can detect earthquake signals faster than some traditional methods and can improve rapid estimates of location and magnitude. But AI has not solved the prediction problem. It still depends on high-quality seismic data and strong monitoring networks.
EPA/Ronald Pena R
Pocket seismic sensors
One promising development is the use of smartphones as seismic sensors. The earthquake network app is a public earthquake early warning system that uses smartphones. It turns users’ phones into motion sensors to detect earthquakes in real time. When an earthquake is detected, the app quickly sends warning alerts to users. Apps such as MyShake and Android earthquake alerts show that millions of phones can act as a distributed warning network. This is especially important for lower-income countries that cannot afford dense traditional seismic infrastructure. A recent global rollout of earthquake detection software (the earthquake network app) through Android phones expanded earthquake warning coverage to 2.5 billion people across 98 countries.
Research has also shown that technology alone is not enough. A warning only helps if people trust it, understand it and know how to respond. Public education, clear communication and simple protective actions such as identifying safe spots in the house, preparing emergency kits and practising mock earthquake drills matter just as much as sensors and software. A warning that confuses people is not much of a warning at all. For example, a new warning after every aftershock is not as effective as alerting people to a new major earthquake.
These lessons help explain what appears to have gone wrong in Venezuela. The country has not developed a mature nationwide public earthquake early warning system on the scale seen in countries such as Japan or Mexico. That means warning capacity was limited from the start. However some people received warnings seconds to minutes before the shaking began through Google’s Android earthquake alerts system.
Several weaknesses probably compounded the problem. If people live close to the rupture zone, the window for warning becomes extremely small. Early reports indicated two large earthquakes happened in quick succession, a pattern that would make rapid detection harder for any warning system. This seems to have created signal confusion in smartphone apps as well as national early warning systems.
The lesson from the past decade is clear. The biggest advances have not come from predicting earthquakes before they happen, but from improving how quickly societies detect them, communicate risk and respond. For at-risk countries such as Venezuela, the way forward is not complicated: invest in dense monitoring networks, protect communication systems, expand public education and build warning systems people can trust. Earthquakes cannot be stopped. But with the right preparation, disasters on this scale do not have to become tragedies of this magnitude.
