Over the past decade, the International Monitoring System (IMS) has progressively benefited from the generous support and collaboration of literally hundreds of institutions, both technical and political, all over the world. Based on these partnerships, a monitoring network unprecedented in history has been built up. According to Gerardo Suárez, who chaired the initial meeting of the IMS team in August 1997 and was Director of the IMS Division at the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) between 1997 and 2006, IMS was “one of the more ambitious projects ever to monitor the earth is now a reality.”

In August 1997, the first IMS team met to take stock of the situation and size up the daunting technical task of building up a monitoring network as rapidly as possible, while adhering to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty’s (CTBT) stringent specifications. It was, in many cases, new ground.