Its membership is comprised of groups responsible for the installation and maintenance of broad-band seismographs either within their geographic borders or globally. Membership in the FDSN is open to all organizations that operate more than one broadband station.
Members agree to coordinate station siting and provide free and open access to their data.
This cooperation helps scientists all over the world to further the advancement of earth science and particularly the study of global seismic activity. The FDSN goals related to station siting and instrumentation are to provide stations with good geographic distribution, recording data with 24 bits of resolution in continuous time series with at least a 20 sample per second sampling rate. The FDSN was also instrumental in development of a universal standard for distribution of broadband waveform data and related parametric information. Network codes are also assigned by the FDSN in order to provide uniqueness to seismological data streams. Network operators request these unique codes for both permanent and temporary networks.