Grillo

Updated May 28, 2021

Grillo

Part of U.S. Agency for International Development

Andres Meira

Open source IoT earthquake early warnings for vulnerable communities,

Grillo's EEW is unique in that it has developed 3 proprietary components; IoT sensors with high performance accelerometer that streams raw telemetry, new algorithms that accurately and quickly determine if an earthquake is happening, and mobile apps/devices/APIs to allow different user groups to access the signal. This is all being done at no cost to the user. Following the September 2017 ea...

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Stage 4: Transition to Scale

Grillo in partnership with IBM and the Linux Foundation has open sourced its software and hardware to the public so that parallel earthquake-early warning systems can be created around the world.

Registered in Mexico as For-Profit

Focus Areas:

Resilience, Crowdsourcing and Open Source, Disaster Risk Reduction and 4 MoreSEE ALL

Implemented In:

Chile and Mexico

Key Partners

Countries Implemented In

22,000

Customers

Employees

$320,000

Funds Raised to Date

Verified Funding

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Problem

Earthquakes kill 13000 people every year and devastate economies. Children particularly are emotionally affected by earthquakes and the uncertainty of the next big event. Earthquakes impact developing economies greater than developed economies due to poor construction, weak government response, and lack of infrastructure for relief efforts.

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Solution

Grillo has created a complete earthquake early-warning system ('OpenEEW') and deployed in Mexico and Chile. This provides up to 90 seconds of advance warning, depending on the location of the earthquake. This is the first EEW to be deployed internationally. Earthquakes do not respect geopolitical borders, and so this solution will help monitor seismic activity and broadcast the life-saving warnings to communities around the world.

Target Beneficiaries

Citizens in seismically-vulnerable areas.

Mission and Vision

Save as many lives as possible by providing tools that help people react before, and after an earthquake.

Competitive Advantage

Less than 1% cost of state-sponsored systems in Mexico and Japan.

Planned Goals and Milestones

Growing community of users connected to the system.
Growing community around open sourcing of early-warning technology, and enabling parallel networks in new countries such as Nepal and Turkey.

To create a robust system that is always working.
To have notifications reach as many people as possible.
To generate income through enterprise solutions.
To save lives.

	Funding Goal	500,000
	Projected Cumulative Lives Impacted	1,000,000
	New Implemented Countries	Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Nepal, Turkey

The Team Behind the Innovation

Grillo's team is composed mainly of scientists, with a total of 5 PhDs. Our team includes prominent seismologists from Mexico's UNAM university, as well as US-based. The chairman of our board is Gary Hattem, who for over 20 years ran the Deutsche Bank Foundation as President. The CEO is Andres Meira who previously lived and worked in Haiti for the Clinton Foundation, delivering important resiliency projects following the 2010 earthquake.