Beyond the obvious disaster, the earthquake in Fukushima in 2011 revealed a lack of environmental radiation monitoring data. Along with friends Joi Ito and Pieter Franken, as well many other dedicated volunteers we set out to solve this, both in Japan and in the rest of the world. Before long we had the largest open data set available anywhere, and our work changed the way this information is collected and published globally. Here’s a short documentary on the project from the early days of our work:
In 2016 we published a paper in the Journal of Radiological Protection detailing our methods and finding, which has become one of the most cited papers on the topic. A number of other papers have been written about us and our work as well.
15 years later Safecast is still active, still collecting and publishing open radiation data all over the world. We’ve also branched into air quality as well and include that in our academic, educational and open advocacy work.
Check out safecast.org