Technologies that predict natural disasters

Although it is impossible to predict earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters precisely, some technologies can help us “predict” natural catastrophes or at least detect the first warning signs.

The earthquake in Venezuela

On 24 June 2026, Venezuela was hit by a devastating seismic event. It consisted of two separate shocks in quick succession, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 respectively.

The epicentre was recorded in the state of Yaracuy. The greatest damage occurred along the coast, particularly in La Guaira and the Caracas metropolitan area.

The earthquake caused more than 6,400 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.

The consequences might have been even worse were it not for something we might consider very strange: many people with Android smartphones received an alert on their phones around 20–30 seconds before the shaking.

This is the Android Earthquake Alerts System, and in a sense it “predicts” natural disasters. Following the events of June, Android’s alert system came to prominence, but how exactly does it work?

How the Android system that prevents earthquakes works

Current technologies do not allow us to predict catastrophic events such as earthquakes far in advance. However, there are early warning systems, such as Android Earthquake Alerts System, which operated on a large scale during last June’s earthquake in Venezuela.

All Android smartphones have an accelerometer, which lets them act as miniature seismographs. They can detect P waves, fast primary waves. When thousands of phones in a particular area detect the same signal, they send an alarm signal to the server.

The server analyses the data and sends an alert to all smartphones in that area. All of this happens within just a few seconds.

Thanks to the network’s speed, the message arrives within seconds, ahead of the earthquake’s shaking, but only by a few seconds because the system cannot actually predict natural disasters.

This is why many people in the Caracas area received an alert around 20–30 seconds before the shaking. That may not seem long, but for many people those seconds were crucial in reaching safety.

Technologies that predict natural disasters: IT-alert

Because Venezuela has no national early warning system, only people with an Android smartphone received the message.

The situation in Italy is different. We have a national early warning system, IT-alert. In situations similar to that in Venezuela, it sends an alert to everyone in the area.

IT-alert is managed by the Civil Protection Department and uses Cell Broadcast technology to send warning signals to all mobile devices across the country.

The system was designed to activate for various possible emergency scenarios: intense rainfall, floods, accidents at industrial facilities, the collapse of large dams, volcanic activity, nuclear accidents, radiological emergencies or tsunamis.

From 2023 onwards, Civil Protection activated IT-alert through a series of regional tests. It officially became active throughout the country on 13 February 2024.

Locally, the system has already been used in some emergencies, such as the fire at the oil facility in Calenzano, near Florence, in December 2024.