Keeping the Global Seismographic Network (GSN) Operational During Covid
Session: Network Seismology: Keeping the Network Running While Integrating New Technologies I
Type: Oral
Date: 4/22/2021
Presentation Time: 09:45 AM Pacific
Description:
As with many geophysical networks, the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the operation and maintenance of the Global Seismographic Network (GSN) during 2020. Stations of the Global Seismographic Network (GSN) have been designed to operate autonomously with very little operator intervention for long periods of time. The reality of this model was strenuously tested with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, as travel by both local station operators and field engineers was severely curtailed. Planned sensor upgrades and preventative maintenance had to be postponed, and adaptive maintenance and repair strategies were put in place. Travel constraints led to increased use of tele-consulting by remote field engineers with local operators. Another strategy to reduce station downtimes included pre-positioning equipment spares that may be easily swapped for damaged elements by local personnel.
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These strategies helped the GSN maintain an overall network uptime of 86.7% during COVID. While this represented a decrease from the 88.7% network uptime reported in 2019, the network continued to exceed our funding agencies’ data availability metric of 85% during 2020. We anticipate that continued implementation of the strategies imposed during the COVID-19 will lead to enhanced local capabilities and long term improved overall efficiencies of ongoing maintenance and operations of the GSN network.
In addition to the COVID impact, we show examples of the continued improvements in both quality and overall data return produced by the replacement of the aging KS54000 borehole seismometers with the next generation VBB borehole sensors (STS6 and T360). The recent implementation of running station data servers in the cloud (as well as on physical disks) at IDA/UCSD, has provided redundancy to the data path in case of local network issues. Looking forward, we will provide an overview of planned upgrades and enhancements in the coming year.
Presenting Author: Katrin Hafner
Student Presenter: No
Authors
Katrin Hafner Presenting Author Corresponding Author katrin.hafner@iris.edu Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology |
David Wilson dwilson@usgs.gov ASL/USGS |
Robert Mellors rmellors@ucsd.edu University of California, San Diego |
Pete Davis pdavis@ucsd.edu University of California, San Diego |
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Keeping the Global Seismographic Network (GSN) Operational During Covid
Category
Network Seismology: Keeping the Network Running While Integrating New Technologies