Peer-to-peer tsunami detection software unveiled

Nevermind those meteorologists with their fancy algorithms and weather tracking devices. Detecting tsunamis may soon become a community affair with the Tsunami Harddisk Detector demonstrated this week at the Ars Electronica exhibition in Linz, Austria. The free software application monitors vibrations in participating computers’ hard disks and shares the data with other computers via a peer-to-peer network. The technology relies on the high sensitivity of a hard disk’s read/write head. As it works with stored data, it scans the disk’s surface with micrometer precision. If its position is changed by even a single micrometer as the result of a tremor it must immediately be returned to the correct position. This data is then sent to a number of users acting as supernodes capable of distinguishing between shaking caused by earthquakes — the most common cause of tsunamis — and that caused by kicking or dropping the computer. It takes only a small number of networked computers to locate the epicenter, measure the intensity, and estimate the risk of a tsunami.

The system may provide an attractive choice to countries, particularly in South East Asia, with growing personal computer use but limited government funds. As with other tsunami detection systems, however, it does not solve the problem of quickly warning the population in heavily populated areas. In the recent Indonesian tsunami, the time between detection and when the tsunami reached land was a mere two hours.

-read more at the inventor Michael Stadler’s Web site