Quantitative Assessment of Earthquake Detection Capability of DAS, MEMS and Broadband Networks in Pasadena, CA

Date: 4/24/2019

Time: 06:00 PM

Room: Fifth Avenue

Low-cost sensors have been increasingly used in the seismological community in recent years, thanks to advances in seismic instrumentation such as nodal sensors, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). These new technologies provide unprecedented dense coverage in study areas, however at the expense of lower resolution on individual sensors. Therefore, it is important to quantitatively evaluate their detection capability and understand the advantages and limitations, especially when compared to current state-of-the-art broadband networks. Here, we systematically evaluate the earthquake detection capability of three different instruments, the Pasadena DAS array (optic fiber), Community Seismic Network (MEMS), and the Southern California Seismic Network stations (Broadband) in Pasadena. First, we quantify the visibility of cataloged local earthquakes on individual sensors and obtain the observation limits for the three instruments. Second, we evaluate the detectability of whole arrays by stacking the characteristic functions of these earthquakes and computing their stack significance level. Finally, we investigate the improvement on local earthquake location to demonstrate the benefit from a large number of sensors.

Presenting Author: Zefeng Li

Authors