DisastersCrowdsourcing for quake-monitoring
Technology is creating a new breed of scientist — citizen scientists – ordinary people and volunteers from all walks of life coming together to help monitor, and possibly mitigate, the next big earthquake through an innovative program called NetQuakes
Technology is creating a new breed of scientist — citizen scientists – ordinary people and volunteers from all walks of life coming together to help monitor, and possibly mitigate, the next big earthquake through an innovative program called NetQuakes.
A play off the popular company Netflix, a movie company that allows users to rent movies through the mail, NetQuakes allows ordinary people to volunteer as a kind of host “family” for one of the program’s many blue seismometers. An American Geological Institute release reports that this grassroots movement, an innovative effort between the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) and regular people, is forming an intricately advanced network of data that could help scientists, emergency experts and the general public become more aware of the dangers involved with earthquakes.
— Read more in “Seismic citizens: Volunteers host home-based seismometers to help assess earthquake threat,” Earth (27 August 2012)
