Keeping the Promise of Earthworm

Session: Regional Earthquake Centers: Highlights and Challenges
Type: Oral
Date: 4/28/2020
Time: 02:30 PM
Room: 215 + 220
Description: 

With the founding of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) vision as presented initially in the US Geological Survey Circular 1188, much has been accomplished in regional networks with increased efficiency and coherency of effort between regions. Organizing the US Reginal Seismic Networks (RSNs) into a national consortium provided many benefits and more focused funding; however, some negative consequences became apparent over time. The focus of funding shifted toward public information emphasis, while the community and education aspects of network operations diminished.

Dr. Caryl Johnson, who passed away this past November, her designs, developed over her 40 years much of the foundational network and seismic association technology utilized by RSNs both in the US and much of the world. For the last two years, Dr. Johnson has been working on a new approach designed to reinvigorate the operations and collaboration between smaller regional networks without interfering with the critical work of ANSS, restoring the community focus and international collaboration lost over the past two decades. This approach returns to the promise of the Earthworm development, providing (1) scalability, (2) flexibility, (3) longevity, (4) data exchange and (5) support.

The open source, xQuake framework uses an executable graph foundation in a pipeline architecture that can be seamlessly integrated into current ANSS quake monitoring systems if desired. This new approach incorporates modern computer analytic methods analytics, including multitopic Kafka exchange rings, cloud computing, a self-configuring phase associator and machine learning. The xGraph system is free for noncommercial use, open-source, hardware-agnostic (Windows, Linux, Mac), with no requirement for commercial datastores.

While Dr. Johnson has done much of the foundation of this new approach to Regional Seismic Network processing, further work is needed to keep the promise, an honoring of her legacy to the regional seismic community.

Presenting Author: Kay E. Aikin

Authors