UWI-SRC manages the largest network of
seismometers in the Caribbean, extending across all of the islands of the English-speaking Caribbean, and seventeen known or active volcanoes. The origins of the modern network go back to the early 1950s, when geophysicist
Patrick Willmore was sent by the British
Colonial Office to investigate a seismic crisis on
St Kitts and
Nevis which had begun in late December 1950. Willmore arrived in February 1951, but soon realised he had already missed the most significant earthquakes of the crisis. To prevent this happening again, Willmore recommended that a regional network of instruments be established by placing one seismograph on 'each of the major British islands', with data collected at a central office. The first seismograph was installed in Trinidad; followed by others on St Vincent and Dominica, and by 1959 there were stations on eight islands. Over time, the instruments used in the seismic network have changed radically. The first seismometers installed were analogue seismographs designed by Patrick Willmore, which recorded onto photographic paper. During the 1970s,
radio-telemetry was introduced, so that signals could be transmitted from the analogue field stations, to the UWI-SRC headquarters. Tools were developed to digitise and time-stamp the analogue data, and then to record and process the digitised data using an in-house
algorithm called "WurstMachine" to calculate the earthquake parameters:
hypocentre and
magnitude. The current generation of seismometers are fully digital, and networked so that they can stream data to UWI-SRC headquarters. The network includes both broadband, three-component and one-component instruments. Many of the seismic stations are co-located with other monitoring instruments (including accelerometers and continuous GPS receivers), and some are shared with regional monitoring agencies run by
UNAVCO,
IPGP and others. ==Directors==