Since its inception in the late 1990s, the verification regime of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) has sparked considerable interest worldwide.

Cutting-edge technologies and scientific methods are applied to monitor the planet for nuclear explosions. The resulting data offer a wide range of civil and scientific applications with the potential to contribute significantly to sustainable development, knowledge expansion and human welfare.

First and foremost it is the vast amount of monitoring data that are collected and stored by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) which attracts the interest of scientists around the world.  For possible applications of each of the four monitoring technologies – seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide – please click here.

Disaster mitigation is a top priority when looking at potential applications of CTBT verification technologies and data in other fields. Interest in this topic increased, entering a whole new phase on 26 December 2004 when a tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, devastated coastal regions all around the Indian Ocean.

For the first time, the CTBTO took concrete steps to allow the use of its verification data for disaster mitigation.  In March 2005, States Signatories tasked the organization with testing the provision of data to selected tsunami warning centres.