The system uses the on-board accelerometers in privately owned smartphones of volunteer participants to detect earthquake waves (rather than conventional seismometers).

The author of the research project and developer of the smartphone application is Francesco Finazzi of the University of Bergamo, Italy.

When the system detects an earthquake, a potentially large number of people in affected locations not too close to the epicenter can receive the warning several seconds (5 to 60) before damaging shaking occurs.

The server collects the signals sent by all the smartphones and applies a statistical algorithm[2] to decide in real time whether an earthquake is likely occurring.

It detects earthquakes through real-time analysis of the data that the smartphone network sends to the central server.

When detection occurs, it is important to obtain an estimate of the epicenter in order to locate the geographic areas that was affected by the earthquake.

Two epicenter estimation algorithms for crowdsourced smartphone-based earthquake early warning systems have been developed and they are detailed in a paper[1] published on the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America journal.