Public Seismic Network (PSN): A Model for Science, Technology and Community in the Coming Age

The Public Seismic Network (PSN) is a model for using technology to connect human awareness to, rather than shield it from, the environment. The PSN is a rapidly growing international group of amateur seismologists, concentrated in California, who record earthquakes with their own digital seismographs and exchange waveform time series and communicate with each other via the Internet. At present, the PSN consists of about 50 seismograph stations, about 250 subscribers to its email list server, and about 10 websites (e.g., http://psn.quake.net/). The World Wide Web is rapidly engulfing many aspects of human life in technological societies and beginning to constitute a virtual reality where many of us spend more and more of our time. At the same time, the physical reality of Earth is being environmentally and ecologically degraded at an ever-increasing rate.  A critical issue is whether the Web will be used to enhance or to obscure our vision of Earth. Most of the Web traffic contains very little sense data, i.e., empirical information, about the Earth. Other than the Internet and other artificial electromagnetic media, seismic waves propagate more rapidly and, therefore, convey information about the state of the planet faster than any other means. Ground motions are disturbances of our rest position on the Earth’s surface and convey the message that change in life is ubiquitous and inevitable. Most of the energy of earthquake-produced ground motions is in the frequency band, several seconds to several Hertz, to which the human brain is most sensitive. If we cannot respond to earthquakes, it will be even more difficult to respond to other phenomena, such as global warming, with much longer time constants. The distribution of low-cost broadband seismometers in conjunction with Web access would allow people worldwide, i.e., the next human generation of Earth, to directly perceive and to share the concrete perception with each other that we all share the same ground.

S12   Digital Communications in Seismology: Glimpses of the 21st Century Seen Today?

The explosive growth in digital communications brought on by widespread public interest in the internet has profoundly changed seismic instrumentation. Digital communication links to seismic stations for real-time data collection, near-real-time data collection, or for least state of health data are becoming standard experimental procedure. The rapid evolution of this technology, however, has led to a proliferation of different approaches to solving the same problem. The primary goal of this session is to provide a forum for comparison of the different technologies currently available. Our hope is that this will help move the community toward a set of standards that will allow for a more transparent exchange of data between networks and for distribution to the broader community. In addition, widespread availability of digital communication links to sensors and between sensor networks promises to profoundly change the scientific infrastructure of seismology. Papers are also solicited on ideas for scientific problems that could be addressed by a network of networks of seismic instruments on a national to global scale with thousands of broadband seismic stations.

Conveners: Gary L. Pavlis, Department of Gelogical Sciences, Indiana University, 1005 10 Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, Phone: +1-812-855-5141, Fax: +1-812-855-7899, E-mail: pavlis@indiana.edu; and Steve Malone, Geophysics Program, University of Washington, Box 351650, Seattle, WA 98195, Phone: +1-206-685-3811, Fax: +1-206-543-0489, E-mail: steve@geophys.washington.edu