Earthquakes & citizen scientists

The Asia@Home workshop started focused on earthquakes and volunteers to track them. The project The Quake Catcher Network presented their results an approach in different parts of the world (Chile, Christchurch, California, etc.) and a collaboration with Taiwan for monitoring earthquakes.

Jesse Lawrance by Daniel Lombraña

Angela Chung by Daniel Lombraña

This project uses low cost USB sensors to detect earthquakes that can be attached to any computer with an USB port. The only requirement is to screw the sensor to a wall or a surface so when there is an earthquake you the sensor will not jump.

There was a talk about a different sensor, Palert, that tries to measure earthquakes but using a different approach: self-sustained sensors that can have a battery to record the shock waves even though there is no power supply.

The Quake Catcher Network Sensor by Daniel Lombraña

A gadget by Daniel Lombraña

While all these talks presented the point of view of the projects, we have a nice talk from the point of view of the volunteers: Dudumomo. He presented several charts about how volunteers provide lots of CPU cycles to different projects, and only ask -in most of the cases- news about the research and progress that the project is achieving thanks to their donations.

The point of view of a vounteer by Daniel Lombraña

There was a lot of discussion about different ideas to engage more volunteers, communities, outreach, new places for deployment, etc. After a first successful day, we relaxed a bit having dinner in one of my favorite Taiwanese restaurants: The House of tea, where everything, and when I say everything, is everything, is cooked with tea leaves .

Beef by Daniel Lombraña

Shrimps by Daniel Lombraña