On the Potential Use of Smartglasses in Earthquake Early Warning

Earthquakes can have a catastrophic impact on the built environment, resulting in serious consequences such as fatalities, injuries, infrastructure damage, and economic losses. In this context, the role of earthquake early warning systems (EEWSs) is becoming increasingly significant. These systems are capable of rapidly detecting earthquakes and issuing alerts, which guide safety emergency actions. They capture ground shaking shortly after an earthquake occurs and raise alarms in target areas with an advance of seconds to several tens of seconds before the strong ground motion impacts on target infrastructures. This paper proposes a new actuator for earthquake early warning whose aim is the safeguard of human operators and technological equipment in critical environments, such as power plants to produce electricity. The system interfaces with human weared smartglasses, which have the capacity to provide with appropriate safety instructions in the event of an earthquake. This allows for the implementation of secure procedures to protect equipment during a seismic emergency, thus enabling humans to safely evacuate the critical area.