My question exactly?
My guess is that it's being activated for tsunami purposes.
I have a hunch its sites that they have activated to provide continuous data. Perhaps data from far away sites can help calibrate data from affected sites by providing norms to compare to past normal relationships.
But hey, it reads to me like IRS instructions and for the past 30+ years I never have got the hang of understanding them. Good thing no one else knows what it means.