Rapid earthquake characterization using MEMS accelerometers and volunteer hosts following the M 7.2 Darfield, New Zealand, Earthquake
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
By: J. F. Lawrence, E.S. Cochran, A. Chung, A. Kaiser, C. M. Christensen, R. Allen, J.W. Baker, B. Fry, T. Heaton, Debi Kilb, M.D. Kohler, and M. Taufer
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Abstract
We test the feasibility of rapidly detecting and characterizing earthquakes with the Quake‐Catcher Network (QCN) that connects low‐cost microelectromechanical systems accelerometers to a network of volunteer‐owned, Internet‐connected computers. Following the 3 September 2010 M 7.2 Darfield, New Zealand, earthquake we installed over 180 QCN sensors in the Christchurch region to record the aftershock sequence. The sensors are monitored continuously by the host computer and send trigger reports to the central server. The central server correlates incoming triggers to detect when an earthquake has occurred. The location and magnitude are then rapidly estimated from a minimal set of received ground‐motion parameters. Full seismic time series are typically not retrieved for tens of minutes or even hours after an event. We benchmark the QCN real‐time detection performance against the GNS Science GeoNet earthquake catalog. Under normal network operations, QCN detects and characterizes earthquakes within 9.1 s of the earthquake rupture and determines the magnitude within 1 magnitude unit of that reported in the GNS catalog for 90% of the detections.
Study Area
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Rapid earthquake characterization using MEMS accelerometers and volunteer hosts following the M 7.2 Darfield, New Zealand, Earthquake |
| Series title | Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America |
| DOI | 10.1785/0120120196 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Year Published | 2014 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Seismological Society of America |
| Contributing office(s) | Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center |
| Description | 9 p. |
| Larger Work Type | Article |
| Larger Work Subtype | Journal Article |
| Larger Work Title | Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America |
| First page | 184 |
| Last page | 192 |
| Country | New Zealand |
| City | Darfield |
| Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |