A group of students from Tribhuvan University in Nepal stood before a group of judges on Monday and told them why their GPS-powered earthquake warning system — including US$20 receivers that people can carry with them — would be popular around the globe. The inexpensive system, which would send users warnings of earth rumblings via radio towers and US$200 earthquake sensors, could appeal to a large number of people living in earthquake zones, said Aashish Dutta Koirala, a member of the Nepal student team.
“An earthquake doesn’t discriminate,” Koirala said to judges at the world finals of the fifth annual Computer Society International Design Competition held in Washington last month. The Nepal team was one of 10 finalists, hailing from universities from Rio de Janeiro to Taipei. The finalists, narrowed from 250 entries in the competition, demonstrated and explained their work before a panel of judges during the four-day event, with this year’s theme, “making the world a safer place.”
The Tribhuvan project, called TremorFlash, would allow users to signal back to the transmitting location that they were safe after an earthquake. Users who don’t send back a “safe” message after an earthquake can be treated as in danger, and the local government can send out emergency teams, Koirala said.
The Nepal presentation included a Flash animated cartoon where a user, sitting on a couch, screamed “Ahhh!” when his receiving device notified him of the early underground rumblings of an earthquake. The cartoon characters then crawled under their bed before the earthquake hit and were safe from damage.
