Tono Research Institute of Earthquake Science (TRIES) was established in 1997. The purpose of the institute is as follows:
1. Development of instrument and technic for observing geophysical components in deep underground and research about behavior of underground water
2. Research about phenomena relating to earthquake generation
3. Research of mechanism of inland earthquake generation in active fault
4. Research of earthquake disaster prevention in the Tono area
We will introduce one of our research in the following:
We have been developing a multi-component borehole instrument (a comprehensive crustal activity observation instrument) that is capable of observing crustal activity at significant depths (like 1 km) for earthquake prediction and geophysical research. This instrument can be equipped with highly sensitive stress meters, strain meters, tilt meters, seismometers, accelerometers, thermometers, and magnetometers, and we can also choose any combination of the sensors. The stress meter could observe stress seismograms without scaling out for Tohoku earthquake(Mw9.0).