PARIS Early on Sunday morning, powerful computers in a Vienna office building received seismic data on the earthquake that spawned the devastating tsunamis across south Asia - information that might have saved lives in the hours between the quake and the waves hitting the coasts of Sri Lanka, India and several other countries. But the data streaming into the computers of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization served no purpose Sunday. The 300 staff are on vacation until Jan. 4. The organization itself is still nothing more than a nascent group of seismic experts and bureaucrats who await signature or ratification on the test ban treaty from 11 more countries before they can officially act. The organization uses a vast network of scientific equipment set up to monitor nuclear explosions, but as fine a measure of nature's force as devised by the humans who have proven so powerless before it. A spokeswoman for the organization, Daniela Rozgonova, said Tuesday that she hoped the world would now see the wider uses of the seismic sensors. She said equipment maintained by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization could help scientists better understand natural disasters. "The discussion is not finished yet about how much of the data can be released," Rozgonova said. "I suppose that events like this might speed things up." Countries like China consider the data collected by the organization as secretive and have resisted its dissemination. More importantly, the United States has still not ratified the agreement on which the organization is based; India and Pakistan, both declared nuclear powers, have not even signed it; and North Korea, a country now suspected of having material for nuclear weapons, is not a party to the treaty. Even if such barriers fell, the Vienna-based group would need to change substantially before it became an instrument to monitor earthquakes. On a very basic level, the organization would have to become a 24-hour operation with continuous staffing through the Christmas and New Year vacation period. Analysts would have to speed up their processing of data, which now takes an average of 24 hours, according to Rozgonova. The group's officials have long noted that their organization, which has an annual budget of $100 million, is sitting on equipment that could save lives. A document produced by the organization in 2002 lays out dozens of civilian uses for its monitoring devices - everything from alerting countries to tsunamis to tracking the creation of icebergs and underwater volcanoes. The Vienna office receives data from 300 monitoring points around the globe. The organization checks for changes in seismic activity, underwater disturbances caused by nuclear devices and particulate matter in the air. Phil McFadden, chief scientist of Geoscience Australia, a government funded organization that monitors earthquakes, said the seismic information was by far the most useful. McFadden said organizations in Australia, Britain and the United States relied on seismic monitors set up by the Vienna group, but that many countries were not set up to receive the data. On Sunday, Geoscience Australia issued an alert in Australia 33 minutes after the earthquake struck saying there was a risk of tsunami, McFadden said, but there was no one to receive the message in affected countries.