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Room: Holiday Ballroom 1

Date: 4/16/2025

Session Time: 4:30 PM to 5:45 PM (local time)

Fifty Years and Beyond of Broadband Seismic Instrumentation: Performance, Precision and Uncertainties

Inertial broadband seismometers, introduced five decades ago, are now standard measuring tools for seismology. These feedback instruments permit high quality ground motion measurements over four to five decades of frequency, while resolving them with astonishingly high resolution, from the order of cm/s down to nm/s. They provide high dynamic range, digital measurement of 3 components of ground motion, and linear, well described response functions allowing the original ground motion to be reconstructed. Thus, it is important to be able to document the precisions and uncertainties of the measurements of these instruments, and of other seismic sensors like accelerometers and geophones, and to assess and manage their performance over time.

One example of such documentation is linking the precision of seismometer measurements to the international system of units (SI) and tracking it over the lifetime of a broadband seismometer or seismic station. An effort is currently underway to develop such a link and thereby introduce seismometers to standardized procedures common in the world of metrology. At the same time, instrument manufacturers deploy a variety of individual techniques to calibrate their wares before they are sold, while network operators deploy clever procedures to remotely monitor the performance of their instruments during their lifetime in the field. With the advent of the use of optical fibers and other innovative seismic measuring devices, the question of procedures and tools to describe, assess and monitor performance becomes broader.

We invite everybody interested in seismic instrumentation to submit abstracts to this session. Topics of interest include calibration techniques; long term assessment of instrument performance; precision and uncertainties and their influence in interpreting seismic data; and comparison of high precision measurements of ground motion from inertial seismometers with observations from optical fibers and other techniques.

Conveners 

Akobuije Chijioke, National Institute of Standards and Technology (akobuije.chijioke@nist.gov) 
Margaret Hellweg, University of California, Berkeley (hellweg@berkeley.edu) 
John Merchant, Sandia National Laboratories (bjmerch@sandia.gov)
Xyoli Perez-Campos, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (xyoli.perez.campos@ctbto.org) 

Oral Presentations