Estimating Rupture Dimensions of Three Major Earthquakes in Sichuan, China, for Early Warning and Rapid Loss Estimates

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 920-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Li ◽  
Maren Böse ◽  
Max Wyss ◽  
David J. Wald ◽  
Alexandra Hutchison ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Line Source ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
Strong Motion ◽  
Preventive Action ◽  
Fault Rupture ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Finite Fault ◽  
Source Models

ABSTRACT Large earthquakes, such as Wenchuan in 2008, Mw 7.9, Sichuan, China, provide an opportunity for earthquake early warning (EEW), as many heavily shaken areas are far (∼50  km) from the epicenter and warning times could be sufficient (≥5  s) to take preventive action. On the other hand, earthquakes with magnitudes larger than ∼M 6.5 are challenging for EEW because source dimensions need to be defined to adequately estimate shaking. Finite-fault rupture detector (FinDer) is an approach to identify fault rupture extents from real-time seismic records. In this study, we playback local and regional onscale strong-motion waveforms of the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan, 2013 Mw 6.6 Lushan, and 2017 Mw 6.5 Jiuzhaigou earthquakes to study the performance of FinDer for the current layout of the China Strong Motion Network. Overall, the FinDer line-source models agree well with the observed spatial distribution of aftershocks and models determined from waveform inversion. However, because FinDer models are constructed to characterize seismic ground motions (as needed for EEW) instead of source parameters, the rupture length can be overestimated for events radiating high levels of high-frequency motions. If the strong-motion data used had been available in real time, 50%–80% of sites experiencing intensity modified Mercalli intensity IV–VII (light to very strong) and 30% experiencing VIII–IX (severe to violent) could have been issued a warning with 10 and 5 s, respectively, before the arrival of the S wave. We also show that loss estimates based on the FinDer line source are more accurate compared to point-source models. For the Wenchuan earthquake, for example, they predict a four to six times larger number of fatalities and injured, which is consistent with official reports. These losses could be provided 1/2∼3  hr faster than if they were based on more complex inversion rupture models.

scholarly journals Real-Time Characterization of Finite Rupture and Its Implication for Earthquake Early Warning: Application of FinDer to Existing and Planned Stations in Southwest China

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Li ◽  
Maren Böse ◽  
Yu Feng ◽  
Chen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Line Source ◽  
Average Distance ◽  
Strong Motion ◽  
Earthquake Early Warning ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Yunnan Region ◽  
Motion Time ◽  
Source Models

Earthquake early warning (EEW) not only improves resilience against the risk of earthquake disasters, but also provides new insights into seismological processes. The Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) is an efficient algorithm to retrieve line-source models of an ongoing earthquake from seismic real-time data. In this study, we test the performance of FinDer in the Sichuan-Yunnan region (98.5oE–106.0oE, 22.0oN–34.0oN) of China for two datasets: the first consists of seismic broadband and strong-motion records of 58 earthquakes with 5.0 ≤ MS ≤ 8.0; the second comprises additional waveform simulations at sites where new stations will be deployed in the near future. We utilize observed waveforms to optimize the simulation approach to generate ground-motion time series. For both datasets the resulting FinDer line-source models agree well with the reported epicenters, focal mechanisms, and finite-source models, while they are computed faster compared to what traditional methods can achieve. Based on these outputs, we determine a theoretical relation that can predict for which magnitudes and station densities FinDer is expected to trigger, assuming that at least three neighboring stations must have recorded accelerations of 4.6 cm/s2 or more. We find that FinDer likely triggers and sends out a report, if the average distance between the epicenter and the three closest stations, Depi, is equal or smaller than log10 (Ma + b) + c, where a = 1.91, b = 5.93, and c = 2.34 for M = MW ≥ 4.8, and c = 2.49 for M = MS ≥ 5.0, respectively. If the data used in this study had been available in real-time, 40–70% of sites experiencing seismic intensities of V-VIII (on both Chinese and MMI scales) and 20% experiencing IX-X could have been issued a warning 5–10 s before the S-wave arrives. Our offline tests provide a useful reference for the planned installation of FinDer in the nationwide EEW system of Chinese mainland.

scholarly journals Status of Earthquake Early Warning in Switzerland

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérick Massin ◽  
John Clinton ◽  
Maren Böse
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Seismic Network ◽  
Earthquake Early Warning ◽  
Fault Rupture ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Origin Time ◽  
P Waves ◽  
Finite Fault

The Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at ETH has been developing methods and open-source software for Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) for more than a decade and has been using SeisComP for earthquake monitoring since 2012. The SED has built a comprehensive set of SeisComP modules that can provide EEW solutions in a quick and transparent manner by any seismic service operating SeisComP. To date, implementations of the Virtual Seismologist (VS) and Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) EEW algorithms are available. VS provides rapid EEW magnitudes building on existing SeisComP detection and location modules for point-source origins. FinDer matches growing patterns of observed high-frequency seismic acceleration amplitudes with modeled templates to identify rupture extent, and hence can infer on-going finite-fault rupture in real-time. Together these methods can provide EEW for all event dimensions from moderate to great, if a high quality, EEW-ready, seismic network is available. In this paper, we benchmark the performance of this SeisComP-based EEW system using recent seismicity in Switzerland. Both algorithms are observed to be similarly fast and can often produce first EEW alerts within 4–6 s of origin time. In real time performance, the median delay for the first VS alert is 8.7 s after origin time (56 earthquakes since 2014, from M2.7 to M4.6), and 7 s for FinDer (10 earthquakes since 2017, from M2.7 to M4.3). The median value for the travel time of the P waves from event origin to the fourth station accounts for 3.5 s of delay; with an additional 1.4 s for real-time data sample delays. We demonstrate that operating two independent algorithms provides redundancy and tolerance to failures of a single algorithm. This is documented with the case of a moderate M3.9 event that occured seconds after a quarry blast, where picks from both events produced a 4 s delay in the pick-based VS, while FinDer performed as expected. Operating on the Swiss Seismic Network, that is being continuously optimised for EEW, the SED-ETHZ SeisComP EEW system is achieving performance that is comparable to operational EEW systems around the world.

scholarly journals Near Real-Time Earthquake Line-Source Models Derived from Felt Reports

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Böse ◽  
Sylvain Julien-Laferrière ◽  
Rémy Bossu ◽  
Frédérick Massin
Keyword(s):  
Line Source ◽  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
General Information ◽  
Fault Rupture ◽  
Information Gap ◽  
Finite Fault ◽  
The World ◽  
Source Models ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Seismic Networks

Abstract Rapid information on fault rupture geometry is critically important to assess damage and fatalities in large earthquakes and is strongly needed to coordinate rapid rescue efforts if and where necessary. Many countries around the world, however, cannot afford to operate dense seismic networks required to rapidly determine rupture geometry. In this feasibility study, we investigate if crowd-sourced felt intensity reports can be used to close this information gap and enable determination of the orientation and spatial extent of fault ruptures. We apply the Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) algorithm to felt intensity reports collected by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC). We develop an empirical relationship between the azimuthal gap between felt reports and FinDer performance for automated event selection. This gives us a dataset of 36 global earthquakes (6.0≤M≤7.3) between 2014 and 2020. We find that the resulting FinDer line-source models are generally consistent with the spatially dependent intensity patterns described by the felt reports, and in many earthquakes achieve a good agreement with the finite-source models published in the literature: for 50% of events the difference in strike is less than 30°, and for 75% less than 55°. FinDer line-source models could be calculated automatically for global earthquakes (M≥6) within 10–30 min after their occurrence, provided a sufficient number of felt reports were available. However, our proposed method not only provides faster results, but also helps to fill a general information gap for many earthquakes around the world, for which rupture geometry information is currently unavailable.

Strain to Ground Motion Conversion of DAS Data for Earthquake Magnitude and Stress Drop Determination

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itzhak Lior ◽  
Anthony Sladen ◽  
Diego Mercerat ◽  
Jean-Paul Ampuero ◽  
Diane Rivet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Warning ◽  
Stress Drop ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
Simulated Data ◽  
Earthquake Early Warning ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Ocean Bottom ◽  
Correlated Noise ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Earthquake Source Parameters

<p>The use of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) presents unique advantages for earthquake monitoring compared with standard seismic networks: spatially dense measurements adapted for harsh environments and designed for remote operation. However, the ability to determine earthquake source parameters using DAS is yet to be fully established. In particular, resolving the magnitude and stress drop, is a fundamental objective for seismic monitoring and earthquake early warning. To apply existing methods for source parameter estimation to DAS signals, they must first be converted from strain to ground motions. This conversion can be achieved using the waves’ apparent phase velocity, which varies for different seismic phases ranging from fast body-waves to slow surface- and scattered-waves. To facilitate this conversion and improve its reliability, an algorithm for slowness determination is presented, based on the local slant-stack transform. This approach yields a unique slowness value at each time instance of a DAS time-series. The ability to convert strain-rate signals to ground accelerations is validated using simulated data and applied to several earthquakes recorded by dark fibers of three ocean-bottom telecommunication cables in the Mediterranean Sea. The conversion emphasizes fast body-waves compared to slow scattered-waves and ambient noise, and is robust even in the presence of correlated noise and varying wave propagation directions. Good agreement is found between source parameters determined using converted DAS waveforms and on-land seismometers for both P- and S-wave records. The demonstrated ability to resolve source parameters using P-waves on horizontal ocean-bottom fibers is key for the implementation of DAS based earthquake early warning, which will significantly improve hazard mitigation capabilities for offshore and tsunami earthquakes.</p>

Insights into deep learning for earthquake magnitude and location estimation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannes Münchmeyer ◽  
Dino Bindi ◽  
Ulf Leser ◽  
Frederik Tilmann
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
Spectral Composition ◽  
Learning Model ◽  
Location Estimation ◽  
Training Set ◽  
Earthquake Source Parameters ◽  
Deep Learning Model

<p><span>The estimation of earthquake source parameters, in particular magnitude and location, in real time is one of the key tasks for earthquake early warning and rapid response. In recent years, several publications introduced deep learning approaches for these fast assessment tasks. Deep learning is well suited for these tasks, as it can work directly on waveforms and </span><span>can</span><span> learn features and their relation from data.</span></p><p><span>A drawback of deep learning models is their lack of interpretability, i.e., it is usually unknown what reasoning the network uses. Due to this issue, it is also hard to estimate how the model will handle new data whose properties differ in some aspects from the training set, for example earthquakes in previously seismically quite regions. The discussions of previous studies usually focused on the average performance of models and did not consider this point in any detail.</span></p><p><span>Here we analyze a deep learning model for real time magnitude and location estimation through targeted experiments and a qualitative error analysis. We conduct our analysis on three large scale regional data sets from regions with diverse seismotectonic settings and network properties: Italy and Japan with dense networks </span><span>(station spacing down to 10 km)</span><span> of strong motion sensors, and North Chile with a sparser network </span><span>(station spacing around 40 km) </span><span>of broadband stations. </span></p><p><span>We obtained several key insights. First, the deep learning model does not seem to follow the classical approaches for magnitude and location estimation. For magnitude, one would classically expect the model to estimate attenuation, but the network rather seems to focus its attention on the spectral composition of the waveforms. For location, one would expect a triangulation approach, but our experiments instead show indications of a fingerprinting approach. </span>Second, we can pinpoint the effect of training data size on model performance. For example, a four times larger training set reduces average errors for both magnitude and location prediction by more than half, and reduces the required time for real time assessment by a factor of four. <span>Third, the model fails for events with few similar training examples. For magnitude, this means that the largest event</span><span>s</span><span> are systematically underestimated. For location, events in regions with few events in the training set tend to get mislocated to regions with more training events. </span><span>These characteristics can have severe consequences in downstream tasks like early warning and need to be taken into account for future model development and evaluation.</span></p>

Too-Late Warnings by Estimating Mw: Earthquake Early Warning in the Near-Fault Region

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 1276-1288
Author(s):  
Mitsuyuki Hoshiba
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Ground Motion ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Strong Motion ◽  
Earthquake Early Warning ◽  
Motion Generation ◽  
Near Fault ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
Fault Region ◽  
Strong Ground

ABSTRACT Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems aim to provide advance warnings of impending strong ground shaking. Many EEW systems are based on a strategy in which precise and rapid estimates of source parameters, such as hypocentral location and moment magnitude (Mw), are used in a ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) to predict the strength of ground motion. For large earthquakes with long rupture duration, the process is repeated, and the prediction is updated in accordance with the growth of Mw during the ongoing rupture. However, in some regions near the causative fault this approach leads to late warnings, because strong ground motions often occur during earthquake ruptures before Mw can be confirmed. Mw increases monotonically with elapsed time and reaches its maximum at the end of rupture, and ground motion predicted by a GMPE similarly reaches its maximum at the end of rupture, but actual generation of strong motion is earlier than the end of rupture. A time gap between maximum Mw and strong-motion generation is the first factor contributing to late warnings. Because this time gap exists at any point of time during the rupture, a late warning is inherently caused even when the growth of Mw can be monitored in real time. In the near-fault region, a weak subevent can be the main contributor to strong ground motion at a site if the distance from the subevent to the site is small. A contribution from a weaker but nearby subevent early in the rupture is the second factor contributing to late warnings. Thus, an EEW strategy based on rapid estimation of Mw is not suitable for near-fault regions where strong shaking is usually recorded. Real-time monitoring of ground motion provides direct information for real-time prediction for these near-fault locations.

scholarly journals Real-time Finite Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) for large earthquakes

2012 ◽  
Vol 191 (2) ◽  
pp. 803-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Böse ◽  
Thomas H. Heaton ◽  
Egill Hauksson
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Fault Rupture ◽  
Finite Fault ◽  
Large Earthquakes

scholarly journals An Evaluation of Strong-Motion Parameters at the S-net Ocean-Bottom Seismograph Sites Near the Kanto Basin for Earthquake Early Warning

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yadab P. Dhakal ◽  
Takashi Kunugi
Keyword(s):  
Early Warning ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Strong Motion ◽  
Earthquake Early Warning ◽  
P Wave ◽  
Japan Trench ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Earthquake Disaster ◽  
Strong Motion Records ◽  
Kanto Basin

We analyzed strong-motion records at the ground and borehole in and around the Kanto Basin and the seafloor in the Japan Trench area from three nearby offshore earthquakes of similar magnitudes (Mw 5.8–5.9). The seafloor strong-motion records were obtained from S-net, which was established to enhance tsunami and earthquake early warnings after the 2011 great Tohoku-oki earthquake disaster. The borehole records were obtained from MeSO-net, a dense network of seismometers installed at a depth of 20 m in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The ground records were obtained from the K-NET and KiK-net networks, established after the 1995 great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster. The MeSO-net and S-net stations record the shakings continuously, while the K-NET and KiK-net records are based on triggering thresholds. It is crucial to evaluate the properties of strong motions recorded by the S-net for earthquake early warning (EEW). This paper compared the peak ground accelerations (PGAs) and peak ground velocities (PGVs) between the S-net and K-NET/KiK-net stations. Because the MeSO-net records were from the borehole, we compared the PGAs and significant durations of the low-frequency motions (0.1–0.5 Hz) between the S-net and MeSO-net stations from identical record lengths. We found that the horizontal PGAs and PGVs at the S-net sites were similar to or larger than the K-NET/KiK-net sites for the S wave. In contrast, the vertical PGAs and PGVs at the S-net sites were similar to or smaller than those at the K-NET/KiK-net sites for the S wave. Particularly, the PGAs and PGVs for the P-wave parts on the vertical-component records of S-net were, on average, much smaller than those of K-NET/KiK-net records. The difference was more evident in the PGAs. The average ratios of S-wave horizontal to vertical PGAs were about 2.5 and 5 for the land and S-net sites, respectively. The low-frequency PGAs at the S-net sites were similar to or larger than those of the MeSO-net borehole records. The significant durations between the two-networks low-frequency records were generally comparable. Quantification of the results from a larger dataset may contribute to ground-motion prediction for EEW and the design of the offshore facilities.

scholarly journals NEAR REAL-TIME DETERMINATION OF EARTHQUAKE SOURCE PARAMETERS FOR TSUNAMI EARLY WARNING FROM GEODETIC OBSERVATIONS

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B8 ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
Sunanda Manneela ◽  
T. Srinivasa Kumar ◽  
Shailesh R. Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Rapid Determination ◽  
Moment Tensor ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Tsunami Source ◽  
Tsunami Early Warning ◽  
Earthquake Source Parameters

Exemplifying the tsunami source immediately after an earthquake is the most critical component of tsunami early warning, as not every earthquake generates a tsunami. After a major under sea earthquake, it is very important to determine whether or not it has actually triggered the deadly wave. The near real-time observations from near field networks such as strong motion and Global Positioning System (GPS) allows rapid determination of fault geometry. Here we present a complete processing chain of Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS), starting from acquisition of geodetic raw data, processing, inversion and simulating the situation as it would be at warning center during any major earthquake. We determine the earthquake moment magnitude and generate the centroid moment tensor solution using a novel approach which are the key elements for tsunami early warning. Though the well established seismic monitoring network, numerical modeling and dissemination system are currently capable to provide tsunami warnings to most of the countries in and around the Indian Ocean, the study highlights the critical role of geodetic observations in determination of tsunami source for high-quality forecasting.

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