Analogue Seismogram Digitization: High School Project

日本語(Japanese Version)

Point of Contact: Miaki Ishii

The first observation of a far-away earthquake (i.e., not felt by people) was in 1889. A seismograph in Potsdam recorded seismic wave arrivals of an earthquake in Japan. Until late 1980s, such ground motions were recorded by analogue seismographs, most of which are paper. These recordings spanning about 100 years provide information about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, climate change, etc. that cannot be analyzed in their analogue form. Furthermore, deterioration of paper accelerates with time and there are often issues of storage space.

The amount of analogue seismograms available around the world is vast. Just at the Harvard University, with single-station operation over about 20 years and with some data that were discarded at the time of operation, there are about 12,000 seismograms. These enormous amount of recordings need to be converted into research-quality digital time series for modern and exciting analyses. In collaboration with Mr. Toshihiro Morinaga of the School Innovation Forum, we have began a project in July of 2018 to involve Japanese high-school students in the digitization process. They will be using the software DigitSeis to generate digital time series from scanned images of seismograms, and will learn about seismology and earth science in general through various learning and interaction opportunities.


What's New?

  • New analysis by Seira Sekiguchi (05/21/1937 LP Z) of Ritsumeikan Junior and Senior High School has been made available. (03/21/2021)
  • New analysis by Hayato Nakatsuka (05/09/1937 LP Z) of Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School has been made available. (01/16/2020)
  • New analysis by Hayato Nakatsuka (05/11/1937 LP EW) of Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School has been made available. (12/13/2019)
  • Visited Meikei High School (interactions with participating students, a lecture, and a Q&A session). (09/24/2019)
  • Visited Yashiro Senior High School (interactions with participating students, two lectures). (09/20/2019)
  • Visited Kyoto Tsukuba Kaisei High School (interactions with participating students). (09/19/2019)
  • Prof. Yoshio Fukao has visited and lectured at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School. (07/04/2019)
  • This project is described in an oral presentation and a poster at the 2019 Seismological Society of America Meeting. (04/26/2019)
  • New analysis of 03/13/1937 LP EW record by Manato Sano of Ritsumeikan Keisho Senior High School has been made available. Click on the relevant date to get to the link to download the SAC data. (04/17/2019)
  • We are now soliciting participation from additional schools for the academic year 2019-2020. (04/01/2019)
  • New analysis of 07/29/1937 SP Z record by Ryo Watanabe of Miyazaki Prefectural Nobeoka High School has been made available. (03/28/2019)
  • New analysis of 03/13/1937 LP Z record by Manato Sano of Ritsumeikan Keisho Senior High School has been made available. (03/25/2019)
  • This project has been selected as one of the Celebrate 100 Grant by the American Geophysical Union.
  • New analyses by Moeno Seki (05/11/1937 LP Z) and Yukito Tajima (05/09/1937 SP EW) of Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School have been made available. (03/19/2019)
  • The digitization project has been reported in the Newsletter of the Seismological Society of Japan. The direct link to the PDF file of the Newsletter is here, but one needs username and password which are given on this page (in Japanese). (03/11/2019)
  • Conducted a skype meeting with Kyoto Tsukuba Kaisei High School. (02/16/2019)
  • A newspaper article about the skype meeting with Miyazaki Prefectural Nobeoka High School (linked to a Japanese newspaper) (02/13/2019)
  • Conducted a skype meeting with Kyoto Prefectural Momoyama Senior High School. (02/13/2019)
  • Conducted a skype meeting with Miyazaki Prefectural Nobeoka High School. It was featured in the afternoon news on Miyazaki TV (02/09/2019)
  • Soliciting schools interested in skype meeting. (01/15/2019)
  • Program to display analysis feedback information has been made available (participation school page). A new version of DigitSeis that is capable of saving feedback information is also published. (12/27/2018)
  • Poster on the project has been presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. (12/14/2018)
  • DigitSeis has been modified to work with 32-bit Windows machines with limited memory.(10/10/2018)


Participating Schools (Academic Year 2020-2021)

Due to COVID-19, we are putting the project on hold. The list below is from the academic year 2019-2020. We'll pick up the project once the situation has improved.
Past Participating Schools and Students


Completed Analyses

　
Image Filename Student SchoolDate
s1150_1937_0521_0522_lp_zew_f.jpg (Z) Seira Sekiguchi Ritsumeikan Junior and Senior High School 09/05/2020
s1138_1937_0509_0510_lp_zew_f.jpg (Z) Hayato Nakatsuka Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School 01/16/2020
s1140_1937_0511_0512_lp_zew_f.jpg (Z) Hayato Nakatsuka Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School 12/13/2019
s1082_1937_0313_0314_lp_zew_f.jpg (EW, image complete) Manato Sano Ritsumeikan Keisho Senior High School 04/17/2019
s1219_1937_0729_0730_sp_z_f.jpg Ryo Watanabe Miyazaki Prefectural Nobeoka High School 03/28/2019
s1082_1937_0313_0314_lp_zew_f.jpg (Z) Manato Sano Ritsumeikan Keisho Senior High School 03/25/2019
s1140_1937_0511_0512_lp_zew_f.jpg (Z) Moeno Seki Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School 03/19/2019
s1138_1937_0509_0510_sp_ew_f.jpg Yukito Tajima Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School 03/19/2019


Acknowledgements

The project has been supported by a volunteer, Moeko Kobayashi of Kyoto University.

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Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences / Harvard University / 20 Oxford Street / Cambridge / MA 02138 / U.S.A. / Telephone: +1 617 495 2350 / Fax: +1 617 496 1907 / Email: reilly@eps.harvard.edu