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、便携的次声传感器，使其能够部署在现有基础设施(即智能城市、气象站、闪电网络等)中。用于极端大气、地质和气候事件的早期预警。频率低于人类听力范围(即f&lt；20赫兹)的声波，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、火山喷发、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，可以在破坏发生前15-45分钟远程探测到。因此，更好地检测次声可以为此类极端事件的发生提供早期预警，具有拯救生命和减少相关经济损失的潜力。我们的目标是与我们的工业合作伙伴Soundskritt合作，研究、扩展和开发最初用于消费电子产品的新兴麦克风技术，以实现次声传感。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。这可以使这种新型的次声传感器技术能够经济高效地部署到各种现有的基础设施中，如气象塔和数百万个个人电子设备(例如手机、智能家居)。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早期预警系统。

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..