Safecast is a global sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements to empower people with data about their environments.

Why is “Is it safe?” a hard question?

March 5, 2013 06:30 March 5, 2013 06:30 March 5, 2013 06:30
 

Top or bottom? Safe or not?

We are getting a lot of questions, both at info@safecast.org and through the Safecast group from concerned people – they all try to understand some aspect of radiation or another. And of course, many people ask similar questions, but without doubt the most often asked question is “Is [something] safe?” or a variation of it. Believe it or not, there is an answer in our radiation FAQ, but people keep asking ;-)

Recently someone who was planning to spend a few months in Kyushu asked about the contamination there. He had located some info on the radiation levels, and had concluded that currently the radiation level is higher than before 3/11. He asked if that was because of Caesium and Strontium contamination. In fact, he was comparing two different data sets that had been collected differently. I pointed him to DPNSNNE which allows users to download consistent monitoring data from all over the country and compare the changes over time. This data shows that aerial radiation levels in Kyushu are the same now as they were before the accident. As often happens in forums/mailing lists, once the question was answered, the discussion shifted the topic to “the difference in risk from Radon (naturally occurring) compared to Caesium and Strontium (anthropogenic)”. Immediately, data on half-lives (=time that it takes for the half of a certain amount of a radioactive isotope to decay) of Rn, Cs-137, Cs-134 and Sr-90 was put on the table as “evidence” and difference between half-life and biological half-life was discussed. So the question transformed into:

  • Since the (radiological) half-life of Radon is only 4 days, while Cs-134/137 has a biological half-life of 70 days (that is, half of it will be eliminated from the body in 70 days), and Strontium’s is 18 years, doesn’t that mean that radon is less risky than the others?

I had been thinking about this a lot and thought I might be able to explain it by example; an example that turned into this blog post (Here is a good place to thank Azby, Jam and everybody who read through my ramblings and pushed me to publish it). Continue reading »

GLC hits over a mIllion points!

March 2, 2013 19:48 March 2, 2013 19:48 March 2, 2013 19:48
 

Safecasters Joe Moross (far left) and Pieter Franken (far right), flanking GLC’s bGeigie team.

Global Survey Corp., which goes by the initials “GLC,” has been mapping Japan’s roads since 2005. Their data is used in many car navi systems, as well as for quite a few specialized applications. For instance, since 2009, the company has been measuring and mapping electromagnetic wave intensity to help customers optimize the placement of antennas for radio broadcast and wireless LANs, and to improve location accuracy for cell phone providers. So they have experience gathering invisible environmental data.

GLC website

Safecast was very fortunate to be introduced to GLC in August, 2011, by Prof. Tomo Furutani, part of Prof. Jun Murai’s team at Keio University, which also provided material support for the project. By early September that year GLC had a bGeigie in operation on one of their road-mapping vehicles, and soon asked for two more. The results they obtained in one year with three bGeigies were so good, we provided ten more units in December 2012. GLC recently passed the million-measurement mark for Safecast, which makes them our single most prolific data-gathering volunteer. We’re incredibly grateful for the time and effort they have put into collecting radiation data for us.

Hidenori Nakajima, the GLC liaison for this project, says, “After 3/11, so many people in Japan were in trouble, and our company wanted to do something for them. When we heard about Safecast’s bGeigie system, we were extremely impressed. Anyone can use it just by attaching it to their car. We’re very happy we’ve been able to help.”

A GLC mapping vehicle with bGeigie attached

GLC has told us that they try to cover every major road in Japan three times a year, and all the other roads at least once each year. Out of their fleet of 14 cars, 7 or 8 are on the road at any one time. With so many bGeigie-equipped vehicles constantly crisscrossing the country we estimate that GLC could soon be providing 500,000 measurements per month to Safecast. To that, we all say, “Hooray!”

Building bGeigies in Aizu

December 19, 2012 04:51 December 19, 2012 04:51 December 19, 2012 04:51
 

Hikone 2012-12-19

From One Spike to 45 Blinking LED’s.

From one Spike on a Software Scope in a Brazil Bar in Tokyo to 45 Blinking LEDs, the Sound of Fake Digital Crickets in a Science Room in Aizu. (A short summery of part of the flow of the radiation recorded from Cesium in Japan to SAFECAST webpage).

Introduction:

It all started with a short Skype call after having tried the satellite phone. Pieter Franken and others from the “block hoofden” group (a Dutch embassy initiative for organizing Dutch citizen abroad) trying to connect with each other and collecting information how bad the damage of the earthquake was. The next day EenVandaag (Dutch TV channel) called us (Yuka Hayashi and me) to ask if we were willing to go with a reporter and cameraman to Tohoku.

After some doubts we accepted the project. On 2011-03-12 we went to Sendai to visit the family of Pieter in Ishinomaki to make a story for EenVandaag. On the way we were constantly updated with information from Pieter. Sometimes, nearly hourly, he reported to us about the situation of the Daiichi nuclear plant. It became clear that we could not take the road on the east side of Japan and we decided to take the west side, though Nagano-ken.

After 4 days in Tohoku the Dutch TV crew was called back and they offered us the flight with them to Holland. We decided to go with them and see how the situation would develop. In Holland we were often in contact with Pieter to take about ideas how to get a simple measurement for radiation going. Pieter was working on his Iphone bGeigie and at that time I was researching the possibilities to have the same software running on an Android phone. Continue reading »

Safecast at Stanford’s Medicine X conference

September 30, 2012 12:49 September 30, 2012 12:49 September 30, 2012 12:49
 

I gave a presentation about Safecast at the Medicine X conference at Stanford today. There was a mix up with some of my slides and I’m not sure if I hit all the points I wanted to, and several people asked me afterwards if the presentation would be online so I thought I’d post it for reference. The slides are largely photo-based (truth is I was going to go no slides until about 72 hours before the talk) so on their own they might not mean much. I’m including the raw notes/text for my speech below as well – forewarning, the text was written just for my own use and meant to be ad libbed a bit so take it with a grain of salt, and please excuse sentences that end weird or misspellings.


full speech text after the jump. Continue reading »

  • September 30, 2012 12:49
  • Posted by sean on September 30, 2012 12:49
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  •   Editorial, Events

Safecasting Fukushima Live Report

May 3, 2012 19:26 May 3, 2012 19:26 May 3, 2012 19:26
 

Today we are Safecasting from Tokyo to Minami Soma, Fukushima. Driving today are Joe and Kalin with self in the back seat handling communications (ahem)


Today’s goal is to measure a hotspot we recently found on our map in Minami Soma, take soil samples, cover a few roads not covered yet, and meet with volunteers in Koriyama in the evening. So far we have had heavy traffic due to rain and Golden Week holiday rush, and we hope to achieve as much as possible. Total distance 500km back and forth.

On board we have a lot of measurement equipment – 8 bGeigies, 14 various geiger counters and 1 spectrometer (SAM940 3″). We also have tools for taking soil samples. Continue reading »

Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun newspaper article about Safecast Loftwork event on March 25, 2012

April 4, 2012 11:24 April 4, 2012 11:24 April 4, 2012 11:24
 

Introduction by the translator: The following is an unofficial English translation of the original article in Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun a Japanese newspaper about industrial matters. The Nikkei group also publishes the Nihon Kezai Shimbun which is the major financial newspaper of Japan. Please note that the journalist solely used the term “Senryokei” to describe radiation measurement equipment (which includes geiger counters, but is a wider, more general term). There is no mention in the article about Safecast’s bGeigie system (of which the geiger counter “survey meter” is only a part of the total) continuously recording sets of GPS-coordinates and radiation levels that gets uploaded to the internet “as-is” under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 license for everyone to observe, download, and use freely without any limitations.

Safecast Survey Meter – Technology and Funds from Outside Sources

“This is our new survey meter”, said Dan Sythe, President of International Medcom in California, presenting a palm-size prototype of a new survey meter. On March 25, 2012 core members of Safecast, an international volunteer group, gathered in Shibuya, Tokyo to celebrate their group’s one year anniversary.

The survey meter measures alpha, beta, gamma rays and can be easily connected to the internet via USB. It has a characteristic design with no sharp edges. The price will be around 50,000 yen and part of each sale will be donated to Safecast.

It will be sold on the Amazon internet site from sometime this summer, and it may make more of the general public participate in radiation measurements to facilitate large scale measurement of the radiation that was dispersed in various places after the nuclear power accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi in March 2011.

Dan Sythe got involved in Safecast through his friend. Several Safecast members got involved in the same way. Safecast started from the online communication of only three individuals. Right after the nuclear power accident Pieter Franken, CTO of Monex Securities Co., Joichi Ito, known for his extensive activities in foreign countries, currently Director of MIT Media Lab, and Sean Bonner, a Los Angeles based entrepreneur, exchanged e-mails and tweets: “What has happened?” “Did you make sure your family is safe?” Their conversation shifted to the subject of radiation and that survey meters to measure radiation were scarce and hard to get hold of. They agreed that they have got to make one by themselves. Continue reading »

  • April 4, 2012 11:24
  • Posted by the_STIG on April 4, 2012 11:24
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  •   Editorial

Safecast seminar in Iwaki

March 7, 2012 13:59 March 7, 2012 13:59 March 7, 2012 13:59
 

This is a guest post written by Ryuichi Mori, ex vice chairman of Dentsu and Advisor to MIT media lab.

On March 1, I was invited by Pieter and Joe of Safecast Japan to convene a radiation seminar in the City of Iwaki, Fukushima. The tsunami all but wiped out Fukushima Prefecture’s fishing industry. The nuclear accidents added further insult to injury. Fukushima’s fish markets have been effectively obliterated. Radiation levels in the area make recovery all the more difficult, and the fishermen continue to spend their days in port rather than out at sea.

Here is the situation that Fukushima is facing. Continue reading »

  • March 7, 2012 13:59
  • Posted by sean on March 7, 2012 13:59
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  •   Editorial

Berliner Gazette: Learning From Fukushima Report

November 17, 2011 13:09 November 17, 2011 13:09 November 17, 2011 13:09
 

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to be invited by The Berliner Gazette to participate in a symposium called “Learning from Fukushima” that they were producing in Berlin. Krystian Woznicki and his team organized a fantastic collection of speakers and many thought provoking discussions were had. In follow up they have produced a report from the Symposium with many of the issues brought up that day. You can download a PDF of the report here or see the full text after the jump. Here are some photos of the event as well.

Continue reading »

Safecasting Seabrook

November 15, 2011 16:52 November 15, 2011 16:52 November 15, 2011 16:52
 

Earlier this year this we had the pleasure of meeting some of the folks at C-10, which is one of the oldest citizen radiation monitoring groups in the world. Established in 1986, they work to address the health and safety issues related to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in New Hampshire and small sensor network dedicated to this. They shared their history and encouraged us in our efforts.

While much of our attention is on Japan, Fukushima specifically – and rightly so – we’ve realized the need for this kind of data in places that haven’t already had problems. If we had the kind of data that we have now for Fukushima, but from sometime before this year’s event, we’d know a lot more about what and how things happened. Because of this we’ve been working to measure other areas when we have the opportunity. Recently Safecast Advisor Ray Ozzie was near Seabrook with a newly built bGeigie and decided to drive around the plant a bit and add the readings to our database. Here’s the map of his readings:

Additionally, Ray writes:

…here are a couple of photos that I snapped during the drive. Given that it was a brisk November day, it was a bit surprising to see the windsurfer fly into the frame as I was snapping the photo. You can also see that the area is a great source of local lobster (and clams).

By zooming out this map [bing | google] (particularly the first one), scanning the boardwalk on Ocean Blvd, you can also get a sense of the plant’s proximity to the beach-going public during the summer. Hence the importance for the public to have good and open data on a continuous basis.

This is a good time to point out that part of Safecast’s mission is to help inform people about their environments and surroundings, with data they didn’t have access to before. We’re all surrounded by things which could potentially have a serious impact on our lives at any moment, being more aware of this can only be a good thing.

PBS story on Safecast

November 10, 2011 21:08 November 10, 2011 21:08 November 10, 2011 21:08
 

Earlier this year Miles O’Brien and Xeni Jardin joined us in Japan to learn a bit about Safecast and joined us on a trip through Fukushima – I blogged about the day when it happened. They were working on a piece for PBS which aired in the US tonight. The full segment is viewable above, and the transcript is available here. There is also a accessory story about some of the abandoned pets we saw on the trip. These are fantastic pieces that really capture what we’re trying to do with Safecast.

Also, here’s a related piece where Miles tells Hari Sreenivasan a bit about Safecast’s hacker roots.

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