Abstract: According to needs of projects, in the period of the tenth five-year plan, the structure of the earthquake precursor observation database systems is re-designed. The design of the database structure is on the basis of previous similar systems, and the advantages of such previous database systems are adopted. This paper introduces in detail the aspects of the design, including the investigation and analysis of previous database systems, the factors that we considered, the contents that the database should include, the main characteristics of this database structure, and the solution for some relevant problems, such as the method to distinguish two instruments of the same kind. The paper also compares the speed of a database query based on the new structure with that of the old.

Key words: Database, System design, Earthquake precursor