There was only one seismometer in Haiti when a magnitude- 7.0 earthquake killed 200,000 people in 2010. The seismometer at the high school was overwhelmed by the shaking and recorded little useful data.
Before foreign experts could travel to the disaster area, they had to install portable seismometers that could record the fading aftershocks.
Haiti was struck by a magnitude-7.2 earthquake last August. The seismometers were not functioning at the time. Several small, inexpensive instruments run by citizen scientists were able to capture the seismic waves, giving researchers a much quicker view of where the Earth had broken deep underground. The death toll from the earthquake was lower than the one in 2010 because the epicenter was in a more rural part of the country.
In 2021, we had that information in real time, according to Eric Calais, a researcher at the cole Normale Sup.
The August earthquake was described in an article published in the journal Science. The fault that caused the devastating 2010 earthquake is about 40 miles farther to the west. The eastern end of the fault was not vertical and there were some surprises in the data. The plates were being pushed together, with the northern one sliding on top of the southern one.
If we hadn't had the aftershock distribution, we wouldn't have been able to put in our models.
The Caribbean has active volcanoes and earthquake faults.
Major earthquakes occur less often because the plates are crashing together at a slower pace. The second half of the 20th century was quiet.
Two earthquake experts traveled to Haiti in 2010 International organizations provided financing to set up seismometers in Haiti, which cost tens of thousands of dollars each. The United States embassy in Haiti had a seismometer that was gathering data after the earthquake.
It is difficult to run a state-of-the-art seismic network in Haiti.
Haiti is vulnerable to natural disasters and is politically unstable. The president was killed in the month before the earthquake. A tropical storm called Grace passed over the island after the earthquake.
At a seismology conference in Malta, Dr. Calais met Branden Christensen, the chief executive of a Panama-based company that uses a cheap computer and a small device to measure tiny.
The smallest seismometers on the market can measure minute ground movements, but over a smaller range of frequencies. They don't need to be anchored to the ground and only need a power outlet and internet connection.
The level of simplicity of the device made me think that it would have a better chance of survival in Haiti. He used some leftover grant money to buy five of them, and he started looking for volunteers who would be willing to put one in their home or office. The network now has about 15 devices.
The data from Haiti shows that the Raspberry Shakes can do the job when it comes to recording small earthquakes.
Haiti's infrastructure limitations are not immune to the Raspberry Shakes. When the main earthquake struck last August, only one of the three was operational.
The host let his internet service lapse, which caused the instrument closest to the epicenter to be offline. He renewed it after he felt the shaking.
The researchers were able to measure more than a thousand earthquakes in the weeks after they were added to the area.
The data published online is only part of the motivation for setting up the network. It is intended to spread knowledge about earthquake hazard among the volunteers who are hosting the Shakes in Haiti.
Steeve J. Symithe is a researcher at the State University of Haiti.
Dr. Symithe, who was born in Haiti, was studying to become a civil engineer but switched fields after the 2010 earthquake, completing a doctorate at Purdue University with Dr.
Haiti, France, Oklahoma and Nepal are examples of countries with networks similar to the one in the world with the creation of the Raspberry Shakes. More than 1,600 devices report their data to the company.
With enough devices deployed, you can start detecting earthquakes in places that people thought were free of earthquakes.
Some of the research does not involve earthquakes. In a paper published in Science in July 2020, scientists used data from 300 seismic stations to observe a global quieting of noise from trains, plane, factories and a reduction of other human-made vibrations as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It would have been very difficult to answer that question without the help of Raspberry Shake.
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