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upstart writes:

When a seismic network failed, citizen science stepped in:

[...] At the time, Haiti had no national seismic network. After the devastating event, scientists installed expensive seismic stations around the country, but that instrumentation requires funding, care, and expertise; today, those stations are no longer functional. In 2019, seismologists opted to try something different and far less expensive—citizen seismology via Raspberry Shakes.

On the morning of August 14, 2021, amidst a summer of COVID-19 lockdowns and political unrest, another earthquake struck, providing the opportunity to test just how useful these Raspberry-pi powered devices could be. In a paper published on Thursday in Science, researchers described using the Raspberry Shake data to demonstrate that this citizen science network successfully monitored both the mainshock and subsequent aftershocks and provided data integral to untangling what turned out to be a less-than-simple rending of the earth.

[...] The Raspberry Shake station nearest to the earthquake, R50D4, provided invaluable information both during and after the earthquake. First, the peak ground acceleration—the maximum acceleration the ground experienced during an earthquake at the location of that seismic station—was slightly greater than expected. The expected value went into building codes published in 2012. Acceleration and shaking, said Lomax, are typically greater on higher floors. This implies that newer, multistory buildings weren’t designed to withstand the 2021 event.

Journal Reference:
E. Calais, S. Symithe, T. Monfret, et al. Citizen seismology helps decipher the 2021 Haiti earthquake, (DOI: 10.1126/science.abn1045)

Original Submission