American Institute of Physics. Center for History of Physics. Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. Phase II: Space Science and Geophysics.

Established in 1984, the Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology, a large consortium of academic institutions, provides academic seismologists with cost-effective access to the advantages of digital technology. IRIS was organized around three components: the Global Seismic Network (GSN), which installs very-broad-band seismometers in network stations to enable scientists to monitor broader frequency and amplitude bands of seismic activity; the Program for Array Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL), which loans digital, portable seismometers that enable scientists to design more varied and sophisticated active-source seismic experiments; and the Data Management Center (DMC), which provides scientists with access to and utilities for processing the data collected with IRIS instrumentation. The IRIS consortium also works with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to set up a seismic monitoring program in the former Soviet Union, but the AIP study did not cover this aspect.