A new open- and crowd-sourced initiative to deploy more geiger counters all over Japan has been kickstarted by Safecast, a website that aggregates radiation readings from government, nonprofit, and other sources.

Safecast plans to send 100 to 600 geiger counters to Japan. The data captured from the geiger counters will be fed into the Safecast website, as well as into Pachube, a global open-source network of sensors. It is one of the larger crowdsourced monitoring efforts, like a similar effort in the United States that predated the Japanese disaster.

For the last month, the Safecast crew and volunteers have been collaborating with universities in Japan and driving their geiger counters around the country and taking measurements. Safecast’s early monitoring trips north of Tokyo returned some disturbing findings, including elevated radiation levels in a kindergarten classroom.

“The initial set of devices will be utilized in areas where coverage is sparse,” says Safecast’s Marcelino Alvarez. “We will deliver these devices to people on the ground who have been trained in how to use them. It could be a teacher, a university student, or a citizen scientist looking to contribute to the project.”