Portable infrasound microphones for early warning of extreme climatic events

该合作伙伴关系的目标是开发廉价，便携式次声传感器，可以在现有基础设施（即智能城市，气象站，闪电网络等）中部署。对极端大气、地质和气候事件的早期预警。频率低于人类听觉范围的声波（即，f < 20 Hz），称为次声，由一系列令人印象深刻的物理现象发出，如龙卷风，飓风，火山爆发，地震，海啸，核爆炸和重型机械操作。众所周知，龙卷风和火山会产生次声，在破坏发生前15 - 45分钟就可以远程检测到。因此，更好的次声检测可以在此类极端事件发生时提供早期预警，有可能挽救生命并减少相关的经济损失。我们与工业合作伙伴Soundskrit合作，目标是研究、扩展和开发新兴的麦克风技术，最初用于消费电子产品，以次声传感。 通过利用MEMS制造可实现的规模经济，我们的目标是以比现有次声麦克风低得多的成本提供更好的性能。 这可以使这种新颖的次声传感器技术能够成本有效地部署到各种现有的基础设施中，例如气象塔和数百万个人电子设备（例如，手机、智能家居）。 反过来，将这些设备与不断增长的物联网网络相结合，最终可以增强我们对一系列潜在灾难性事件的预警系统。

The goal of this partnership is to develop cheap, portable, infrasonic sensors than can be deployed across existing infrastructure (i.e. smart cities, weather stations, lightning networks, etc.) for the early warning of extreme atmospheric, geologic and climatic events. Acoustic waves at frequencies lower than the human hearing range (i.e., f < 20 Hz), known as infrasound, are emitted by an impressive set of physical phenomena such as tornados, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear explosions, and heavy machinery operation. Tornados and volcanos are notably known to produce infrasound that can be detected remotely, 15 - 45 minutes before destruction occurs. Better detection of infrasound can therefore provide early warning on the occurrence of such extreme events, with the potential to save lives and reduce related economic losses.Working with our industrial partner Soundskrit, our goal is to research, extend, and develop emerging microphone technologies, originally intended for consumer electronics, to infrasound sensing. By leveraging the economies of scale achievable through MEMS manufacturing, we aim to offer better performance at a significantly lower cost than existing infrasound microphones. This could enable the cost-effective deployment of this novel infrasound sensor technology into a variety of existing infrastructure such as weather towers and into millions of personal electronic devices (e.g., cellphones, smart homes). Integrating these devices with the ever-increasing web of the Internet of Things could, in turn, ultimately enhance our early warning systems for a range of potentially disastrous events..