Quake-Catcher Aims to be Largest Distributed Seismometer Network

Nature is reporting that a new distributed computing application is looking to monitor earthquake data using the accelerometer in many computing devices. In the long run, "Quake-Catcher" will hopefully be fast enough to give warning before major earthquakes. "If it works, it will be the cheapest seismic network on the planet and could operate in any country. It wouldn't be as sensitive as traditional networks of seismometers, but Lawrence says that's not the point. 'If you have only two sensors in an area, you have to have a perfect system. If you have 15 sensors in a system it [can] be less perfect. One hundred, one thousand, ten thousand -- your need for the system to be perfect becomes much smaller,' he says. 'That's really our approach -- just to have massive numbers.'"

Comments

Great vaporware application

[barwasp]

And no matter if it runs Linux or not, that spyhardware will never prevent or predict an earthquake

My Earthquakes. Let me show you them.

[Bushido Hacks]

Wow, Stanford. I hate to break it to you guys but the United States Geological Survey beat you to it. On the other hand, I would like to try out the seismograph software. On the other hand, the boys down at Berkeley have instructions on how to build your own seismograph. I think I'll try that out until the software becomes available.