iPhone app tells if building is safe as a tsunami shelter

Is your building tall enough to offer adequate shelter in a tsunami? That is a question that is worth asking, especially when you live in a country like Japan, where earthquakes are normal occurrences, and there is always a danger of a tsunami should the next big one hit. Nabla-Zero, a Japanese IT company that specializes in disaster prevention, has decided to do something about the situation by conjuring a free application for the iPhone which is capable of measuring whether a building is tall enough to deliver the right kind of shelter from a tsunami.

Known as the “AR TSUNAMI-CAMERA”, it will rely on the iPhone’s camera as well as the power of augmented reality to transpose a virtual image of a wave up to 25-meters against the actual scenery. Majority of the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake stood anywhere from 3 to 10 meters in height. This app was developed after local governing bodies approached Nabla-Zero, and will see action in disaster prevention education programs in public schools. There are plans to roll out an Android-powered version. BlackBerry who?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps