Elevator pitch

The research aims to design an architecture that could lead to advances in recording seismic events. Being able to record seismic events over time provides a way to plot maps which highlight the areas most at risk from earthquakes. With this information there is more opportunity to plan and design infrastructure such as the type of building and its location. This type of technology has been successfully used in Japan but relied on expensive technology and government intervention. This project describes an alternative approach which may be more feasible to implement in developing countries using low-cost open hardware. The philosophy behind using open hardware is to provide more opportunity for building sustainable solutions which is seen as crucial to the success of projects within the markets of developing countries. The designs for the hardware are freely available for use by any hardware manufacturer. By employing copyleft licensing techniques a manufacturer who makes changes to a design must make these changes available to others. Thus, as with open source software, any improvements made are shared with the community. Although being able to record seismic events is extremely important it should be feasible to take this further by using the technology to offer alerts of seismic events. As described in the proposal this may offer enough valuable time to respond accordingly. Again this technology has been deployed successfully in developed countries such as Japan but required considerable investment. The emerging mesh-based technologies chosen for study in the proposal could allow communication to take place where there is little existing communications infrastructure.