Portable infrasound microphones for early warning of extreme climatic events

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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..