Still in the throes of a nuclear disaster, Japanese residents need reliable information about radiation levels throughout the country. Now, a website was just started to crowdsource radiation data collected by private citizens.

The site, RDTN.org, urges its visitors to purchase a radiation detection device, take readings in their area and then post those readings to the site for all to see. To submit those readings, the site offers a form to enter which equipment was used, when the reading was taken and the longitude and latitude of the location.

Then, the purveyors of the site plan to add that data to places on its map, coordinating it with readings from the government. They hope the result will be a more detailed and timely look at radiation levels throughout the country. "With conflicting reports of radiation levels in affected areas, we wanted to build a way to report and see data in an unbiased format," the website says.

People at RDTN.org emphasized that their crowdsourced information is not intended to replace government data, but they hope that "data sets from various sources can provide additional context to the official word in these rapidly changing events."

Great idea. However, these radiation detection devices aren't cheap — from the links provided on the site, you'd have to spend hundreds of dollars for a good one, if you can find one that's not backordered. At the same time, people living in the most afflicted areas probably have basic survival issues to deal with, taking priority over purchasing some pricey gadget to measure radiation.

That said, even if only a dozen additional readings are submitted to the site, that's important information that could serve to verify government data.

[via Boing Boing]