Caltech/USGS Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN): Modernization of Regional Earthquake Center Operations

Session: Regional Earthquake Centers: Highlights and Challenges [Poster]
Type: Poster
Date: 4/28/2020
Time: 08:00 AM
Room: Ballroom
Description: 

More than 20 million people live within the boundaries of the Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN). In particular, Los Angeles County has the highest earthquake risk of any county in the nation. Southern California has experienced four damaging M>7 earthquakes in the last 22 years and in addition the Los Angeles area experienced large (Mw6.7) earthquakes in 1971 and 1994. More than 150 major earthquake faults accommodate the Pacific North America plate motion across southern California. The San Andreas fault accommodates a large portion of the plate motion but numerous low slip rate faults, some in urban areas, collectively also contribute significantly to the hazard. Since 1981 the SCSN has recorded on average 322 events of M≥3.0 per year and one M≥6.0 every ~3 years, including aftershocks.

The SCSN is a modern ANSS Tier 1 digital seismic network that monitors ground motions, seismicity and provides real-time earthquake information products such as earthquake location, magnitude, origin time and ShakeMap. The SCSN comprises of about 380 CI digital stations and 220 partner stations feeding real-time data to Caltech/USGS Pasadena. We use a variety of digital data communications, such as cell modems, USGS and other microwave systems, radios, satellite and the internet.

The SCSN also transmits waveform data (equivalent to 422 stations) in real-time to several partner networks. We distribute our products via PDL, email and SMS to ANSS partners and others.

We will discuss improvements in telemetry architecture for better redundancy and resiliency of our seismic data acquisition systems. These include a) multi-path dynamic routing in the field b) sending a redundant data stream directly into the cloud and c) using VPN tunnels for encryption and resiliency. We will also show how our systems are setup with automatic fail-over between two data centers and a cloud instance. The SCEDC distributes the data and products generated by SCSN.

Presenting Author: Rayomand Bhadha

Authors