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

Quake Catcher...

[__aaclcg7560]

How many more server mods do we need for Quake?

Accelerometers

[junner518]

using the accelerometer in many computing devices Like a Wiimote?

Re:Accelerometers

[Harmonious Botch]

The aggregate would be reliable, not the individual data.

Re:Accelerometers

[zappepcs]

Every piece of data that can be corroborated will help. Sure, wiimotes shake normally, but if all of them in L.A. start shaking.. well that is something to look at. That is what the summary alludes to with the statement that with more than 2 sensors the system can be less precise.

The fact that you could have corroboration from 1500 points in a 75 square mile area is quite an improvement on what they have now, and at a much cheaper price.

If you spend time analyzing data, it's amazing what you can find. That is one of the reasons that the US government wants to monitor everyone's communications... to spot small trends... and of course to gather evidence to use against political rivals thus ensuring their unending reign of ... what did the French call them ? oh yeah, terrorists

Back on track. The sensitivity of things like the wiimote add huge potential to such an endeavor. Just through sheer numbers, the size of the area shaking makes a big difference on the impact or relevance of the seismic event. It's physics, and if you are trying to see the true graph of something, the more data points you have to plot, the more informative it is. Even if some of the sensors are unreliable, they have the ability to ignore anomalous readings and use those that match others. Since you can be certain that there is an event happening (old system still in place) you can ignore or throw out data from sensors that are TOO active or not active at all, then sift through what is left to see what you find.

I'm reasonably certain that they will see a lot when they learn the true extent of the area affected by any particular event. For example, if the event stays limited to only the fault area it would be much different than if an entire area were affected outside the fault line area. Having thousands of sensors will help show that. Perhaps through this they will learn that certain geologic structures actually do redirect the energy to other areas, allowing predictions of damage to match what before were unpredictable events thus adding perhaps minutes to the warning times. That would save lives and that is what they want to do. Mapping effects through an area will help. Thousands of sensors will help achieve that despite the seemingly unreliability of the sensors themselves.

There are millions of ants in an ant hill, kill a couple hundred and they carry on. This is the same sort of idea.

Re:Accelerometers

[Torvaun]

Improv Everywhere will have a field day with this.

Re:Accelerometers

[Nullav]

Except that you're supposed to shake a Wiimote when using it. Every new game that came out would level cities around the globe.

Re:Great vaporware application

[Brian Gordon]

I definitely don't mind anyone spying on my accelerometer.. besides, this definitely has some mass appeal. You're contributing to something that could really help people, not just crunch numbers for (what's the word you used oh yeah) VAPORWARE research. Plus it doesn't tear up your CPU at night. I'd be concerned about coordinated pranks, like thousands of 4channers all shaking their computers making the system think theres an apocalypse coming :)

Re:Great vaporware application

[Dannkape]

I'd be concerned about coordinated pranks I think the key is that he figured out how to detect *subtle* movements (according to TFA), rather than just the obvious ones. (Otherwise, how could he ever hope to detect pre-quakes as a warning agains major ones ahead of time?

I'm more skeptical as to how accurate he can geolocate each laptop. I've had IP-geolocation tools tell me I'm in a city 500km away...

Re:Great vaporware application

[watzinaneihm]

Plus it doesn't tear up your CPU at night
The article is thin on details, but I think this might kill your network instead of killing your CPU.
The idea here is to detect subtle movements of the laptop (which are small enough to not need shutting the laptop down). Apparently whenever the accelerometer senses a motion it will communicate to a central server within a second. Imagine using one of these in the train or a bus...the laptop would be constantly pinging the server. A quake of magnitude 4 is not going to feel any stronger than the movement of a train

Similar Project?

[Talkischeap]

I signed up for the Tsunami Harddisk Detector project, but don't know if they are related.

"Thanks for your interest in the Tsunami Harddisk Detector project. We are currently installing the system on a world wide basis. To keep the system in a stable state, further installation is an incremental process. We have put you on our mailing list and will inform you as soon as we can make the software available to you. Best regards, Michael Stadler ____________________ www.ninsight.at "

So I sent off an email asking about spyware, etc., and got this back.

"Thanks for your request. The software doest not contain any kind of malware. It will be sponsored by travel agencies, but they only show little images of advertisements. That's all. At the moment we are still testing the software and will be making it available to you as soon as possible. Regards, Michael Stadler On 9/26/07, Talkischeap wrote: "Greetings, I'm very interested in obtaining your "new" Tsunami Harddisk Detector software. I live on the Northern California coast (near Mendocino) and this is definitely earthquake country. However... I AM a bit concerned that your software is sponsored by advertisements, and ask you if it contains ANY: * Spyware * Adware * Viruses * Trojans * Rootkits * Malware * Anything else invasive And if it doesn't, then I'm definitely interested, and please place me on your "waiting list" for a copy."

So this appears to be a different project, but both of them are pretty nifty.

Of course... the "tin foil hat" types will quickly realize that this has the capabilities to track your comings and goings (i.e. Your daily routine).

Hope is not a plan

[westlake]

In the long run, "Quake-Catcher" will hopefully be fast enough to give warning before major earthquakes.

and the scientific basis for prediction is what, exactly?

a meaningful prediction has to be precise in location and in time.

time is the enemy:

the thirty second warning is little better than "duck and cover" if it cannot be communicated effectively.

Re:Hope is not a plan

[Scrameustache]

In the long run, "Quake-Catcher" will hopefully be fast enough to give warning before major earthquakes.

and the scientific basis for prediction is what, exactly?

Precursor tremors.

Re:Hope is not a plan

[Animats]

the thirty second warning is little better than "duck and cover" if it cannot be communicated effectively.

Actually, a 30 second warning is quite useful, but not to humans. There are such warning systems in California. When the warning system trips, elevators stop at the nearest floor, subways and BART trains stop, gas valves at schools and mobile home parks close, and some hazardous processes shut down.

But the data from that comes from fixed seismic stations, not somebody's random accelerometer.

Re:Great vaporware application

[MrNaz]

Personally, I think this is a dud idea.

1,000 laptop accelerometers cannot do what a single seismic sensor can, because they are orders of magnitude less sensitive. You can't take 1,000 sensors, add the data together, and say it is 1,000 times more effective than a single device. If the sensor granularity is not sufficient to detect what you are trying to detect, then one or one million will not be able to detect your subject. It'd be like using one cheap VGA webam to try to photograph surface topography on Pluto, and when that didn't work, trying the same thing by using 1,000 cheap VGA webcams together.

Stupid.

Re:Great vaporware application

[MrNaz]

Not relevant.

Lucky Imaging uses multiple high accuracy devices that are accurate enough to capture the granularity required, but are otherwise limited by extraneous transient factors. By using multiple devices the chance of achieving an optimum reading vis a vis those extraneous factors is maximised. This situational opportunism is why it is called "Lucky Imaging", and it cannot be applied to the scenario where the device itself is not capable of making the reading necessary, even under optimum conditions.

Also, I'm not entirely sure how you thought that my example of a "cheap VGA webcam" was applicable to observatory quality low light CCDs mounted in an assembly the size of a shipping container.

Re:Great vaporware application

[Eivind Eklund]

There are techniques for extracting higher quality data from overlapping low-resolution data sets. In the visual space, it's obvious that this is possible: If you have a single low-res camera, a static photographic subject, and full control of movement you can move a camera less than a pixel for reach picture taken (in a controlled way). Then you get sub-pixel-resolution data plus noise in the resulting difference set between different pictures. If you have ENOUGH difference sets, you can cancel out the noise. You then get sub-pixel resolution.

To extend this to a domain where you don't have the effective control, you have to automatically detect where different pictures fit. I remember having seen somebody that did this; I can't remember where, though.

Eivind.