. >> but a new app could be used to warn people miles away that katy utis has the story. >> reporter: designed in california, and downloaded across the world, developers of the my shake app await data from the earthquakes. >> we're jittery, too. >> lewis schreier is working with uc berkeley's seismological lab to turn your mobile phone into a quake sensor. >> the accelerometer in the phone been record the ground shaking, send that data to our system and we cacause that data a to understand the physics of the process underneath us, how the buildings around us respond to these quakes and we have more data than we have from the tradition counseleismic networks. >> i might have 1,000 sensors. here in california alone, there may be 16 million smartphones. >> data sent to the lab will be compared to official usgs seismic readings. once it's been thoroughly tested and deeped accurate it could system especially morn pore places like nepal. >> here an alert can save lives. so it becomes vital for somebody in a country for which there is no early warning system. >> reporter: the my shake app is