The FDSN: history and objectives

The origins of the Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN) can be traced to the summer of 1984. At that time, GEOSCOPE - the French global network of broadband instruments - was already well under way, and in the United States, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) had just published its Science Plan for Global Seismographic Network (GSN). There was clearly an opportunity and the need to involve scientists from other countries in planning for the future of global seismology. An ad hoc meeting of some ten West European seismologists had been arranged in August during the annual meeting of the European Geophysical Society in Louvain. This may be considered to signify the beginning of widescale international cooperation, even though this particular group eventually became the nucleus of ORFEUS (Observatories and Research Facilities for EUropean Seismology). Rather than taking an active role in deployment of new stations, it chose to focus on the issue of providing the service for data collection and exchange, with an important mission of developing the requisite software.