Sunday, October 24, 2010

Earthquake and Tsunami Detection

An article came out this week on pcmag.com about how now the IBM will be able to use computer hard drives to predict earthquakes and get details about ones that have happened. Also the hard drives can predict and track Tsunamis. The IBM have been able to do this since 2006 but the patent for it was employed until 2010. The article states that this method of forecasting could give people minutes to act before the earthquake would hit and gives information to rescue teams on the places most effected so that they can be more effective.  According to the text however, some of the longest warning systems for earthquakes only give people ten seconds, so this method seems to good to be true to me.  Fitting in with the text on the deterministic method, the article states that  the reliability of using this method is spotty, mostly because people could have laptops and be moving them around a lot so the data is inconsistent. Also not all people have computers so this method of detecting and recording earthquakes and tsunamis is very much so geared towards the MDCs, while the LMDs would have little to no use for this method.

Link to the article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371337,00.asp

Video- Bob Friedlander talking about IBM method:

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