Quake-Catcher Network (QCN)

In parallel with iRODS workshop, there was another Asia@Home session. The session talked about the Quake-Catcher Network (QCN). The QCN provides software so that individuals can join together to improve earthquake monitoring, earthquake awareness, and the science of earthquakes. The QCN links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the worlds largest strong-motion seismic network. To detect seismic activities, the QCN use vibrational sensosrs called MEMS accelerometers. The QCN use volunteer distributed computing network platform (i.e. BOINC) to do the real-time computation with data from the sensor. The QCN software was developed by Stanford University and to start volunteer simply plug the seismic sensor install on their computer via USB interface, install BOINC client and attach the QCN project. The session's participants  was given opportunity to try the  sensor and the application at first hand as shown in the figure above :)