About NERV Disaster Prevention
The NERV Disaster Prevention App is a smartphone service that delivers earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption and emergency warnings, as well as provides weather-related disaster prevention information for flooding and...
The NERV Disaster Prevention App is a smartphone service that delivers earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption and emergency warnings, as well as provides weather-related disaster prevention information for flooding and landslides, optimised based on the user's current and registered locations.
The app was developed to help people living in or visiting an area where damage is expected to occur, to accurately assess the situation and make quick decisions and actions.
With information received directly through a leased line connected to the Japan Meteorological Agency, our proprietary technology enables the fastest information distribution in Japan.
▼ All the information you need, in one app
Get a wide range of disaster prevention information, including weather and typhoon forecasts, rain radar, earthquake, tsunami and volcanic eruption alerts, emergency weather warnings and landslide information, river information, and heavy rain risk notifications.
By interacting with the map on the screen, you can zoom in on your location or pan across the country and see the cloud cover, typhoon forecast areas, tsunami warning areas, or the scale and intensity of an earthquake.
① Providing users with the most appropriate disaster information
The home screen displays the information you need at the time and place you need it. When there’s an earthquake, the home screen will show you the latest information. If another type of warning or alert is issued while the earthquake is active, the app will sort them depending on the type, elapsed time and urgency, so you’ll always have the most important information at your fingertips.
② Push Notifications for Important Information
We send out different types of notifications depending on the device’s location, the type of information and level of urgency. If the information is not urgent, we send a silent notification as not to disturb the user. For more urgent situations where a disaster is time-sensitive, a ‘Critical Alert’ alerts the user to an imminent danger. Notifications like Earthquake Early Warnings (Alert level) and Tsunami Warnings will be forced to sound, even if the device is in Silent or Do Not Disturb modes.
Note: Critical Alerts will only be sent to users in the target area of the most urgent types of disasters. Users who have registered their location but are not in the target area will instead receive a normal notification.
※ In order to receive Critical Alerts, you need to set your location permissions to “Always Allow” and have Background App Refresh turned on. If you don’t want Critical Alerts, you can disable them from Settings.
③ Barrier-Free Design
We paid close attention when designing the app to ensure our information is accessible to everyone. We put a focus on accessibility, with colour schemes that are easy to distinguish for people with colour blindness, and use a font with large, clear letters so long bodies of text are easy to read.
▼ Supporters’ Club (In-App Purchase)
In order to keep doing what we do, we’re looking for supporters to help us cover the development and operational costs of the app. The Supporters’ Club is a voluntary membership scheme for those who want to give back to the NERV Disaster Prevention app, by contributing to its development with a monthly fee.
You can find out more information about the Supporters’ Club on our website.
https://nerv.app/en/supporters.html
[Privacy]
Gehirn Inc. is an information security company. The security and privacy of our users is our highest priority. We take great care not to collect excessive amounts of information about our users through this application.
Your exact location is never known to us; all location information is first converted to an area code used by everyone in that area (like a zip code). The server also doesn’t store past area codes, so your movements cannot be tracked.
Learn more about your privacy on our website.
https://nerv.app/en/support.html#privacy
Apr 15, 2024
Version 5.1.2
This update features the following improvements
- Real-Time Seismic Intensity is now displayed on the Earthquake Early Warning screen by default
- Improved Real-Time information updates while viewing the Earthquake Early Warning screen
- The map on the Earthquake Early Warning screen now shows a larger area around the current location
- Improved Shaking Detection algorithm
- Improved display of Tsunami Forecast areas
- Added a retry process in the event of a network error
- Fixed English Translation of certain Tsunami Information
[Recent updates from the Development Team]
We extend our heartfelt condolences to those affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake that occurred at the beginning of this year. We also solemnly remember those who lost their lives.
During the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, we weren't satisfied with the performance of our push notification delivery infrastructure, so we tripled the number of instances and quadrupled the memory allocation to each, ensuring notifications were sent out as quickly as possible. We also identified and rectified minor issues in the Strong Motion Monitor layer and the program responsible for determining the notification range of estimated seismic intensity. Despite the unprecedented demand, our systems handled over 900 million accesses, with data transfers exceeding 4TB, at an error rate of 0%. The Strong Motion Monitor layer received a peak access of over 23,000 requests per second.
While reinforcing our infrastructure and handling traffic incurs a cost, these expenses are offset by the support of our Supporters' Club members. We sincerely appreciate your ongoing cooperation, which allows us to maintain and improve the system's reliability.
Since last year, we have been participating as committee members of the Japan Meteorological Agency's "Study Group on the Provision of Information on Long-Lasting Tsunami." However, given the tsunami warnings issued on January 1st and April 3rd of this year, there is still more work to be done to improve the quality of the information.
As we enter the new fiscal year, many of you may be embarking on new endeavours. With the changing seasons, please take care of your health.
Previous Versions
Here you can find the changelog of NERV Disaster Prevention since it was posted on our website on 2023-09-25 11:04:43.
The latest version is 5.1.2 and it was updated on 2024-04-22 10:56:29. See below the changes in each version.
NERV Disaster Prevention version 5.1.2
Updated At: 2024-04-15
Changes: Apr 15, 2024
Version 5.1.2
This update features the following improvements
- Real-Time Seismic Intensity is now displayed on the Earthquake Early Warning screen by default
- Improved Real-Time information updates while viewing the Earthquake Early Warning screen
- The map on the Earthquake Early Warning screen now shows a larger area around the current location
- Improved Shaking Detection algorithm
- Improved display of Tsunami Forecast areas
- Added a retry process in the event of a network error
- Fixed English Translation of certain Tsunami Information
[Recent updates from the Development Team]
We extend our heartfelt condolences to those affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake that occurred at the beginning of this year. We also solemnly remember those who lost their lives.
During the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, we weren't satisfied with the performance of our push notification delivery infrastructure, so we tripled the number of instances and quadrupled the memory allocation to each, ensuring notifications were sent out as quickly as possible. We also identified and rectified minor issues in the Strong Motion Monitor layer and the program responsible for determining the notification range of estimated seismic intensity. Despite the unprecedented demand, our systems handled over 900 million accesses, with data transfers exceeding 4TB, at an error rate of 0%. The Strong Motion Monitor layer received a peak access of over 23,000 requests per second.
While reinforcing our infrastructure and handling traffic incurs a cost, these expenses are offset by the support of our Supporters' Club members. We sincerely appreciate your ongoing cooperation, which allows us to maintain and improve the system's reliability.
Since last year, we have been participating as committee members of the Japan Meteorological Agency's "Study Group on the Provision of Information on Long-Lasting Tsunami." However, given the tsunami warnings issued on January 1st and April 3rd of this year, there is still more work to be done to improve the quality of the information.
As we enter the new fiscal year, many of you may be embarking on new endeavours. With the changing seasons, please take care of your health.
NERV Disaster Prevention version 5.1.1
Updated At: 2023-12-29
Changes: Dec 29, 2023
Version 5.1.1
This update fixes a few minor bugs.
■ 2023 In Review
This year, we experienced complex patterns of data processing, such as tsunamis caused by large volcanic eruptions overseas and a series of large overseas earthquakes, tsunamis caused by earthquakes near Torishima that continued without a known magnitude, and J-ALERTs in the early morning and at night.
There were many other non-development tasks as well, such as holding lectures at study groups of the Cabinet Office and the Digital Agency, and participating as a committee member in study groups of the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It was a year in which our role was no longer limited to just developing disaster prevention applications.
This release will be the last update of the year. We want to thank you all for your support and for taking good care of the app over the past year. We will continue to update the app in the coming year to make it even more useful for everyone.
Misato Katsuragi also commented during the attack of the angels: "You don't care about our reasons, do you? You must be the type of person women hate." But you never know when a disaster or crisis will strike. We hope that you will reconfirm your disaster stockpiles and evacuation methods in various situations for the year 2024.
Please stay safe, as the year-end and New Year's holidays are also a season of accidents and fires.
NERV Disaster Prevention version 5.1.1
Updated At: 2023-12-29
Changes: Dec 29, 2023
Version 5.1.1
This update fixes a few minor bugs.
■ 2023 In Review
This year, we experienced complex patterns of data processing, such as tsunamis caused by large volcanic eruptions overseas and a series of large overseas earthquakes, tsunamis caused by earthquakes near Torishima that continued without a known magnitude, and J-ALERTs in the early morning and at night.
There were many other non-development tasks as well, such as holding lectures at study groups of the Cabinet Office and the Digital Agency, and participating as a committee member in study groups of the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It was a year in which our role was no longer limited to just developing disaster prevention applications.
This release will be the last update of the year. We want to thank you all for your support and for taking good care of the app over the past year. We will continue to update the app in the coming year to make it even more useful for everyone.
Misato Katsuragi also commented during the attack of the angels: "You don't care about our reasons, do you? You must be the type of person women hate." But you never know when a disaster or crisis will strike. We hope that you will reconfirm your disaster stockpiles and evacuation methods in various situations for the year 2024.
Please stay safe, as the year-end and New Year's holidays are also a season of accidents and fires.
NERV Disaster Prevention version 5.1.0
Updated At: 2023-11-14
Changes: Nov 14, 2023
Version 5.1.0
・ Added "Synoptic Chart" layer to Early Access
・ The "Lightning" layer is now available to all users
・ Added Upgraded/Downgraded warning regions to the Tsunami Information screen
・ Fixed an issue where the ashfall forecast display could become distorted when the device's font size was set to large
■ Synoptic Chart Layer
New to Early Access is a brand new layer - the Synoptic Chart.
Also known as a "Weather Map", this layer provides an overview of weather patterns - displaying isobars, pressure systems, fronts, and an infrared cloud layer as observed by the Himawari meteorological satellite. Past observations are taken seven times a day (every 3 hours), and you can view forecasts for 24 and 48 hours ahead (updated twice daily).
■ Early Access
"Early Access" is a perk for NERV Disaster Prevention Supporter's Club members (paid) to access new features ahead of public release. For details, refer to the membership guide in the app's Menu tab.
■ Lightning Layer
The previously featured Lightning layer in Early Access is now available to all users. You can select it from the Layer button in the Map tab. It allows you to check the situation of cloud discharges and lightning strikes through lightning nowcast and the lightning monitoring system.
■ Recent Activities of the Development Team
・ We've been operating the NERV Disaster Response vehicles to respond to large-scale power outages and network communication issues. These vehicles were recently showcased at the Mitsubishi Motors booth at the Japan Mobility Show. It was great to see many people interested in our activities!
・ On November 9th, we held an open forum event using X's (formerly Twitter) Spaces feature with representatives from khara, TBS, and NERV. It was quite a process to get approvals from the higher-ups of each company using their official accounts, but it turned out to be quite an enjoyable event.
・ This month, we're preparing for speaking engagements at events held by the Cabinet Office, Code for Japan, and TEDxUTsukuba. We will also be serving as committee members for discussions at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It's a ton of homework, but we haven't forgotten about preparing new app features! Please look forward to the developments.
・ Onboard food sales on the Tokaido Shinkansen have ended, and I heard ice cream is now sold through vending machines on the platforms, but I couldn't find them... I was hoping to have some ice cream on a recent trip...
We hope you continue to support our efforts and that you'll keep using the NERV Disaster Prevention app in your daily disaster mitigation efforts.
Now, on to the next update!
NERV Disaster Prevention version 5.0.3
Updated At: 2023-09-19
Changes: Sep 19, 2023
Version 5.0.3
・ Fixed a widget display bug on iOS 17
・ Improved some VoiceOver readouts
We've recently been making efforts to improve the efficiency of our Push Notification delivery system since as the number of users steadily increases, so does the cost of running the service.
To quote a certain Misato Katsuragi, "You know, money is a tricky thing to get right... The fate of humanity is at stake here!"
As the temperature is gradually changing, please make sure to take care of yourself~
