INTRODUCTION
On May 1, 1998 the Central American Seismic Center (CASC) was opened in Costa Rica. The center has the purpose of permanently storing the most important data from seismic stations in Central America, as well as collecting data from Central American stations in semirealtime in order to issue daily bulletins. All data in the database will be available for access through the Internet.
BACKGROUND
In 1988 a cooperative project in disaster prevention between all Central American countries was started and organized through CEPREDENAC (Centro de Prevencion de Desastres Naturales en America Central). One of the most important components in the program was seismology, and for all six countries reinstallation and/or improvement of existing analog field stations and central recording equipment was initiated. Data acquisition systems were installed in all the Central American country networks, and by the end of 1992 95 digital stations were in operation. Today the number is 138. At the same time a joint Central American effort was made to...