Japan has always been an earthquake-prone country (1995 Kobe earthquake, remember?). This is due to the fact that Japan is located dab smack in the middle of where some oceanic and continental plates meet. In an effort to prevent the massive death toll during the Kobe earthquake (5,500 people were killed), the government is developing an earthquake warning signal sent to the people via SMS. The technology will be operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The system measures the primary waves, the preliminary weak yet fast moving waves of an impending quake and predicts the route and strength of the S-waves, the secondary slower yet more destructive waves. The location and strength of the S-waves will then be sent to people via the joint efforts of Japan’s three largest mobile phone networks. As of current, the developers project that those nearer the epicenter might not receive an SMS at all due to the nature of the current algorithm. But according to sources, “researchers agree that the possibility of any warning is better than none.”