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Upcoming activities

Past Activities

This two-week course will be held in Quito, Ecuador from July 10 through the 24, 2011. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation and the U.S Department of Energy, accepted participants will receive travel, sustenance, and registration support. The application process wil be open on February 1, 2011 and will remain open until April 1.

  • Special Session "Guide to Sustainable Seismographic Networks" at SSA 2011 Annual Meeting on April 13-15, 2011 in Memphis, TN.

The session will be led by John Filson and Steve Malone, and is planned to generate a community initiative to develop a publication based on 21st century seismological practices that would be useful to government decision-makers in developing countries. Please consider participating in the special session "Guide to Sustainable Seismographic Networks" at SSA's 2011 SSA Annual Meeting. The abstract deadline is 11 January 2011, and a link to abstract submission instructions are posted at http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2011/

From October 24 through 27, 2010, 87 scientists, planners and development experts met in Heredia, Costa Rica to outline concrete strategies to develop and sustain seismological capacity in Middle America. This workshop was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the American Geophysical Union. Please check this site regularly for udates on follow-up activities and initiatives.

  • Congressional Hazards Caucus Briefing on Haiti Earthquake

  • Symposium on "Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk in Latin America and the Caribbean"

Will be held at the upcoming AGU Meeting of the Americas in Foz do Iguassu, Brazil, 8-13 August 2010

As part of the new International Development Seismology activities, IRIS collaborated with multiple government, non-government, academic and private organizations from the U.S., Haiti, and other nations on a two-day interdisciplinary dialogue at the University of Miami on March 22 and 23. Key Findings of the Workshop were addressed at the recent "International Donors' Conference towards a New Future for Haiti" held in NYC.

  • Out of Africa Workshop

In 2008, the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering and Division of Earth Sciences jointly funded IRIS to convene a workshop on transitioning networks of earthquake monitoring stations in developing countries into fully sustainable networks of advanced seismic observatories. Held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February that year, the workshop brought together key members of the IRIS community in the US and in Southeast Asia, South America, and Middle America to build strategies for transitioning networks of earthquake monitoring stations in developing countries into fully sustainable networks of advanced geophysical observatories. The Workshop Report summary recommendations were that

  • Geophysicists must be "densified" through more education and training
  • New instruments are needed, but must be coupled to effective capacity building
  • Software and instruments must be adapted for local requirements
  • Regional data centers and confidence building measures are needed to move towards open data