This is cool. The Radiation Network is a crowd based and privately run radiation monitoring system that is free for everyone to check out. Each yellow disk on the map indicates a reading. The map is updated every minute by it’s network members. So with the news in Japan in regards to their nuclear disaster, a site like this will be able show exactly the impact on the US in the West Coast.
Now what would really be cool is to turn this into a mobile application? hint hint. I bet a radiation network mobile app would get thousands of downloads through iTunes. We will probably see other networks pop up, or even a group like Google might get in on the action and help the Radiation Network soup up their product?
Also, I expect the number of citizen monitors to increase, just because this nuclear disaster in Japan is causing folks to buy up detectors and everything else dealing with radiation monitoring. But a word of caution–because this is a crowd based deal, it is very difficult to insure that quality readings are being done.
All in all though, I think this is a great resource, and in the coming days and weeks and months of this nuclear disaster, we will see the global impact of the event. (from what I understand, a global network version is being fired up, and the network is expanding internationally) Bravo to Tim Flanegin and his crew for putting this resource together, and I just hope his host’s servers can handle the traffic. –Matt
We have received a lot of feedback on our Radiation Network, including gratitude for this service, and we really appreciate the support. A lot of suggestions and questions (and some complaints) have been forwarded as well, so I would like to address those here, because we do not have time to respond to your individual email messages.