RESUMO
The protracted nature of the 2016-2017 central Italy seismic sequence, with multiple damaging earthquakes spaced over months, presented serious challenges for the duty seismologists and emergency managers as they assimilated the growing sequence to advise the local population. Uncertainty concerning where and when it was safe to occupy vulnerable structures highlighted the need for timely delivery of scientifically based understanding of the evolving hazard and risk. Seismic hazard assessment during complex sequences depends critically on up-to-date earthquake catalogues-i.e., data on locations, magnitudes, and activity of earthquakes-to characterize the ongoing seismicity and fuel earthquake forecasting models. Here we document six earthquake catalogues of this sequence that were developed using a variety of methods. The catalogues possess different levels of resolution and completeness resulting from progressive enhancements in the data availability, detection sensitivity, and hypocentral location accuracy. The catalogues range from real-time to advanced machine-learning procedures and highlight both the promises as well as the challenges of implementing advanced workflows in an operational environment.
RESUMO
About 10% of seismic events in and near China from 1985 to 2000 were repeating events not more than about 1 kilometer from each other. We cross-correlated seismograms from approximately 14,000 earthquakes and explosions and measured relative arrival times to approximately 0.01 second, enabling lateral location precision of about 100 to 300 meters. Such precision is important for seismic hazard studies, earthquake physics, and nuclear test ban verification. Recognition and measurement of repeating signals in archived data and the resulting improvement in location specificity quantifies the inaccuracy of current procedures for picking onset times and locating events.