AutonomousHigh
Google Android Earthquake Alerts System Reportedly Underestimated Kahramanmaraş Earthquake and Failed to Send Urgent Warnings to Millions
- Occurred
- Feb 3, 2023
- Published
- Jul 27, 2023
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
During the February 6, 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence, Google's Android Earthquake Alerts system reportedly estimated the initial magnitude-7.8 earthquake at only magnitude 4.5–4.9. Just 469 users reportedly received its highest-level "Take Action" warning, while approximately 500,000 received lower-level notices; researchers later estimated that roughly 10 million people could have received urgent warnings providing up to 35 seconds to seek safety.
Developers
- Earthquake early warning system developers
Deployers
- Earthquake early warning system deployers
Harmed parties
- Public safety
- People exposed to earthquake hazards
- General public of Turkey
- General public
- Android users in earthquake-affected areas of Turkey
- Android users in earthquake-affected areas
- Android users
Classification
Category confidence: 85%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: System failure in automated earthquake alerting caused potential life-threatening harm by missing millions of warnings.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8