A high-school student who designed an app that sends earthquake alerts more readily than the Central Weather Administration (CWA) is facing bandwidth issues after a surge in downloads as wary Taiwanese endure aftershocks from a major quake on April 3.
The app (台灣地震速報), which is free on Apple’s App Store, has been compared favorably with the national emergency alert system, which has remained largely silent to people outside the immediate area of epicenters amid a spate of quakes this month.
The app’s developer, Kang Chiao International School student Lin Tzu-yu (林子祐), said that it had garnered about 10,000 downloads before this month, but they have surged to more than 320,000 since the April 3 quake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale.
Photo: screen grab from the App Store
He designed the app using publicly available data online, Lin told reporters on Tuesday at the school’s Xiugang Campus in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店).
The app has been praised for its capability to issue warnings seconds before shaking from a distant earthquake reaches the user’s location and for a user-friendly interface that displays information, including a countdown to potential shaking and magnitude predictions.
Lin told Taiwan Television News he has long been fascinated by typhoon and earthquake response measures, and coding, which he taught himself in junior-high school.
Inspiration for the earthquake warning app came when he read about open-source software that analyzes publicly available seismic data, he told the Chinese-language United Daily News.
The app took 18 months to complete, he said, adding that he watched YouTube videos to help him create it, as at the time he knew nothing about coding for Apple devices.
Another difficulty he encountered was a lack of time, as he was studying to get into college while working on the project, he said.
“The surge in users moved me deeply,” he said. “I never thought that 320,000 people would download something I made.”
Asked about comments saying that his app is better than the CWA earthquake alerts, Lin said his program differs from the government’s alert system, as it sends alerts for any earthquake that is expected to be magnitude 4.5 or greater and of at least intensity 3, or “light” shaking.
“Ultimately, the data originate almost entirely from CWA observation stations,” Lin said, adding that he is interested in collaborating with the agency.
However, the interest in his creation has brought problems, as the app is hosted on a server with limited bandwidth that his family pays for, he said.
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
TECH EFFECT: While Chiayi County was the oldest region in the nation, Hsinchu county and city, home of the nation’s chip industry, were the youngest, the report showed Seven of the nation’s administrative regions, encompassing 57.2 percent of Taiwan’s townships and villages, became “super-aged societies” in June, the Ministry of the Interior said in its latest report. A region is considered super-aged if 20 percent of the population is aged 65 or older. The ministry report showed that Taiwan had 4,391,744 people aged 65 or older as of June, representing 18.76 percent of the total population and an increase of 1,024,425 people compared with August 2018. In June, the nation’s elderly dependency ratio was 27.3 senior citizens per 100 working-aged people, an increase of 7.39 people over August 2018, it said. That
‘UNITED FRONT’: The married couple allegedly produced talk show videos for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to influence Taiwan’s politics A husband and wife affiliated with the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) were indicted yesterday for allegedly receiving NT$74 million (US$2.32 million) from China to make radio and digital media propaganda to promote the Chinese government’s political agenda and influence the outcome of Taiwan’s elections. Chang Meng-chung (張孟崇) and his wife, Hung Wen-ting (洪文婷), allegedly received a total of NT$74 million from China between 2021 and last year to promote candidates favored by Beijing, contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) and election laws, the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office said. The couple acted as Beijing’s propaganda mouthpiece by disparaging Hong Kong democracy activists
EARLY ARRIVALS: The first sets of HIMARS purchased from the US arrived ahead of their scheduled delivery, with troops already training on the platforms, a source said The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said it spotted 35 Chinese military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, flying to the south of Taiwan proper on the way to exercises in the Pacific, a second consecutive day it has reported such activities. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the missions, reported just days before tomorrow’s US presidential election. The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. Its arms sales to Taipei include a US$2 billion missile system announced last month. The MND said that from 9am yesterday,
RSS