One of the problems that appears to be common for earthquake researchers and other researchers around the world involves using computer programs. Each individual researcher or group of researchers might want to use a specific computer programming language to work on a project. That can make sharing data and computer programs inefficient or impossible.

Several efforts are in progress to help with that problem.

One involves getting procedures established for having different language computer programs communicate with one another through “pipes” and file sharing.

Another involves identifying free download versions of different language computer programs that researchers might want to work with. I myself am using Perl. Different versions of Fortran are presently being checked for how well they will work with this type of effort.