Scientists in California announced a new app yesterday that will use technology built into smartphones to crowdsource real-time data about earthquakes.

The app, called MyShake, uses cellphone motion sensors to recognize the shaking of an earthquake as it happens, and sends anonymised location data to a central system for analysis.

Richard Allen, director of the University of California's Berkeley Seismological Lab, which developed the app in conjunct with Deutsche Telekom's Silicon Valley Innovation Centre, appealed to smartphone users to download the tool, saying “we need your help”.

“We want to use the sensors on your phone to record the impacts of an earthquake so we an understand them,” Allen said. “With your help, we're going to change the way we do seismology.”

Allen said while the United States and other earthquake-prone regions have seismic detection networks, many do not. But even those places have millions of smartphones, which can be a ready-made network of detectors, he said.

The motion sensors - called accelerometers - already built into most smartphones can record earthquakes of magnitude greater than 5 on the Richter scale, according to the lab.

Developers hope to eventually have enough users online to be able to send out alerts from the epicentre along an earthquake's predicted path. Allen said the alerts would in theory give a few seconds’ warning.

The MyShake app is available for free download for Android, and a version for iPhone users is being developed.

- dpa