In this study we are going to present preliminary results of global coherent infrasound measured at IMS infrasound stations and its correlation with atmospheric dynamics. A new implementation of the Progressive Multi-Channel Correlation (PMCC) algorithm enables characterization, with a single processing run, of coherent noise in log-spaced frequency bands from ~0.01 to 5 Hz. Such a new array...
The USArray Transportable Array (TA) is a network of approximately 400 seismo-acoustic stations deployed on a 70 km Cartesian grid covering an area of 2,000,000 km^2 in the continental United States. The network moves eastward through station redeployments and is now located on the Atlantic coast. This dense network has provided unprecedented opportunities for research in seismology,...
The method to determine the vertical profiles of temperature and wind in the atmosphere using data from infrasound monitoring are proposed. The method to determine the average vertical profiles of temperature and wind are proposed. The method is based on the method Nealder-MFA (Multidimensional unconstrained nonlinear minimization) algorithm for finding the minimum of a function of several...
Powerful volcanic eruptions, such as those of Mt. Kelud in 2014 or Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, may cause disturbances in the different layers of the atmosphere. These fluctuations are measured by infrasound stations and analyzed in order to extract parametric data that best characterize the volcanic source. The remote monitoring of volcanic activity with infrasound is of interest to the Volcanic...
Development of optimal infrasound signal detection procedures needs to consider signal characteristics. We investigate the performance of automated infrasound detectors on impulsive and extended signals. In the first case, waveforms recorded by the Korean infrasound array CHNAR are analyzed using the progressive multi-channel correlation method (Cansi, 1995) and the adaptive F detector...
Characteristic features of infrasound waves observed at Antarctica reveal physical interaction involving surface environments in the continent and Southern Ocean. A single infrasound sensor has been continuously recorded since 2008 at Syowa Station (SYO; 39E, 69S), the Lützow-Holm Bay (LHB), East Antarctica. The recording data clearly represent background oceanic signals (microbaroms) during...
Propagation of infrasonic energy through the atmosphere is complicated by the dynamic and poorly resolved nature of the propagation medium. While the influence of spatial variations in the atmosphere is well understood, the presence of temporal variations has proven to be a significant challenge in applications involving propagation of infrasound through the atmosphere. This temporal...
Infrasound technology has been used by various institutions around the world for various applications well before the major undertaking by CTBTO in 1999 for establishment of the International Monitoring System (IMS) network. The IMS network consists of four main types of technology and includes infrasound technology. The main purpose for the IMS network is to enforce the Comprehensive...
We demonstrate that the reflectivity method can be applied to the modelling of infrasound propagation. The reflectivity method is a slowness (or wavenumber) integration method widely applied in the seismological community to generate synthetic seismograms in layered media. Some limitations of conventional ray tracing are circumvented since head waves are represented and shadow zones are more...
A great deal of infrasound observations of Mt. Etna appear in the literature, and major eruptions have long appeared in the Reviewed Events Bulletins (REB) of the CTBTO. However, thus far, most of these observations have been made from the immediate vicinity of the volcano and from its west, by the IMS infrasound station in Tunisia. There are limited infrasound observations in winter, when...
The atmosphere is a complex system submitted to disturbances in a wide range of scales, including high frequency sources as volcanoes, thunderstorms, tornadoes and at larger scales, stratospheric warming events, gravity waves from deep convection or wind over mountains, atmospheric tides and planetary waves. These waves affect the different atmospheric layers submitted to different temperature...
Infrasound is one of the four techniques in the verification regime of the CTBT. IMS infrasound network is composed of 60 arrays; each array has 4 to 9 sensors disposed in various geometries and installed in different environment or condition. This network was designed to detect a nuclear explosion at a threshold of 0.5 kt. The purpose of this study is to identify the best infrasound station...
NET-VISA (Network Processing Vertically Integrated Seismic Analysis) is a probabilistic generative model that describes the geophysics of event formation, the propagation of energy along multiple mediums, the generation of noise, and the performance of detectors. In this work we extend the previous models for seismic and hydro-acoustic mediums to include infrasound as well. Unlike other...
Explosive volcanic eruptions are among the most powerful sources of infrasound observed on earth, with recordings routinely made at ranges of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. These eruptions can also inject large volumes of ash into heavily travelled aviation corridors, thus posing a significant societal and economic hazard. Detecting and counting the global occurrence of explosive...
The method of identification signals from atmospheric storms based on the Fourier, spectral, morphological and correlation analysis. Signals from this source have a very low frequency. This method allows extracting the signal, its direction and velocity. Results compare with maps of meteorological fields.
The International Data Centre (IDC) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has been routinely processing data from the infrasonic component of the International Monitoring System (IMS) for several years now. One aspect of processing that remains to be completed is an order of magnitude estimate of the source size. In this work we report on the inclusion of an...
We present a simple and brief method of determining the sources of noise, their frequency, and recurring events from infrasound stations. This is based on the analysis of a large amount of data provided by the automatic newsletter SEL3 along the years. In order to corroborate the data, we have analyzed the South American stations IS02, IS08, IS09, IS14 and IS41. Similarly, we can find out that...
Kazakhstan Data Center (NDC) has bulletins of infrasound detections constantly calculated with the use of the data of two infrasound stations: IS31- Aktyubinsk – since 2001 and Kurchatov – since 2011. IS31- Aktyubinsk has been installed to the north-west of Kazakhstan, Kurchatov infrasound array – to the east of Kazakhstan. However, during more than two years the data of Kazakhstan infrasound...
Currently, usual detection algorithms are based on a temporal segmentation of the signal into multiple windows of fixed size in which a test function is applied to test the presence of spatially coherent signal. This temporal segmentation presents limitations such as the choice of the window size and the time step between windows of analysis. We therefore introduce an innovative detection...
Since the late 1990s, steady progress has been made in understanding the physics of long-range infrasound propagation in the atmosphere. However, it appears that the propagation problems are still solved principally by numerical techniques developed long ago. One of the most frustrating aspects of these techniques is their inability to predict the waveform sensitivities to atmospheric...
The IMS infrasound array IS37, near Bardufoss in northern Norway, started providing data in October 2013. In August and September 2014, IS37 recorded for the first time infrasound signals from each of 15 ammunition destruction explosions at Hukkakero, a military site in northern Finland at a distance of 320 km. The first 12 of the explosions were large blasts with yields of approximately 20...
The results of study of the wind field structure in the upper stratosphere, mesosphere and lower thermosphere obtained by a recently developed infrasound probing method are presented. The method is based on the effect of infrasound scattering from highly anisotropic wind velocity and temperature nonhomogeneities in the atmosphere. The spectral characteristics of the wind velocity vertical...
This technique enables to obtain more credible detection results as it minimizes probability of false alarm with designated detection probability. The technique is based on the principle of Λ likelihood ratio maximization with joint recording of pressure pulsations and wind speed. As Λ assessment criterion the technique uses the product of conditional probability ratios for independent...
Infrasound and seismic methods have been used for monitoring eruptive activity at Tunguruhua and Reventador volcanoes. Since July 2006, a seismo-infrasonic network recorded 6,000 explosions at Tungurahua larger than 45 Pa and 3 explosions larger than 1,000 Pa. During major eruptions (July 14-15, 2006; August 16-17, 2006; February 6-8, 2008, May 28, 2010; December 4, 2010; December 3-4, 2011;...
This study uses acoustic reflectivity modelling to describe the propagation and ducting behaviour of infrasonic waves with the aim of identifying and characterizing events at a single station. Atmospheric background conditions are modified by probabilistic variations of gravity wave profiles to simulate atmospheric dynamics and thus identify infrasonic propagation paths through various...
Infrasound monitoring of active volcanoes provides direct evidence of the injection of volcanic material into the atmosphere. From local to regional distances, infrasound is now used routinely for volcano monitoring whereas volcanic source parameters are commonly derived from direct observations on the field. In this work we compare field observations, with results of numerical simulations...
The Regional Seismic Travel Time (RSTT) tomography model has been developed to improve regional phase predictions (Pn, Sn, Pg, Lg) in order to increase seismic location accuracy and precision even when regional and teleseismic data are combined. Travel time uncertainty estimates for RSTT are determined using phase-specific one-dimensional, distance-dependent error models that have the benefit...
P-wave arrival time data, collected from 150 local earthquakes recorded at 10 telemetered stations located around Abu Dabbab area, has been relocated by three-dimensional velocity model using Simul3 software. Three-dimensional velocity model for earthquake location were computed by inverting the high quality data in the periods from June to August 2004, for hypocenter locations and P-wave...
This paper presents interpretations of deep refraction and wide-angle reflections "deep seismic sounding" (DSS) data and analyses of potential fields data. An integrated model of the physical properties and lithosphere structures displays distinct features that are related to tectonic history of the study area. Linear positive magnetic anomalies reflect the position of associated deep faults,...
We image Southeast Asia and the northern part of Australia by cross-correlating ambient seismic noise recorded at over 500 stations. The group velocities are measured through applying narrow band filters on the retrieved Rayleigh wave Green's functions and used in a probabilistic tomographic approach to map the velocity structure of the region. The inverted images from 8 seconds to 40 seconds...
The Regional Seismic Travel Time (RSTT) model and method have proven to be effective for reducing event location errors. RSTT is openly available and is integrated into the location code used by the International Seismological Centre (ISC). Because the RSTT model is global in extent and travel times can be computed in real time, RSTT is applicable to the whole International Monitoring System...
Naqu array in western China were built by CEA, it run in 2002 and then began to supply waveform data. The earthquakes occurred from 2007-2008 were used in this paper, the mislocation vectors show symmetry axes in their slowness and azimuth components. For the slowness the line of separation is at about 180deg against north. The azimuth pattern shows a symmetry axis perpendicular to the axis in...
The PKiKP waves reflected from the inner core boundary (ICB) are of interest for deep Earth studies and for monitoring purposes of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). The PKiKP reflections evidence clear mosaic pattern of the inner core surface. We present a new study of PKiKP waveforms obtained from the International Data Centre (IDC) and the prototype IDC (data...
The study of the upper mantle structure is of huge interest for understanding of geodynamics. Its characteristics define the thermal and substance transfer between upper and lower part. Receiver function technique is used to study upper mantle structure and the transition zone in the mantle beneath Bulgaria. It is applied to the data from 11 stations of National Digital Seismological Network,...
A global 3D velocity model of the Earth’s mantle has been developed to improve the accuracy and precision of seismic travel time predictions for a wide suite of regional and teleseismic phases. Improved travel time predictions lead directly to significant improvements in the accuracy and precision of seismic event locations as compared to locations computed using standard 1D velocity models...
Development of stress and strain fields is the cause of deformations during a process of subduction. Outer rise earthquakes both tensional and compressional (Christensen and Ruff, 1988) as well as shallow inland earthquakes caused by intersesimic coupling leads to accumulation of strain. These earthquakes occurring in the subduction zones deform the crust permanently which ultimately changes...
We calculated receiver functions under the Northwestern Andes and adjacent areas, to deduce crustal thickness. We use data from the broadband network of Colombia, which has been working since 2008; presently the network consists of 29 stations, 10 of which have been installed between 2012 and 2014, and are operated by the Colombian Geological Survey. With the receiver function calculation, we...
Seismicity along the Gulf of Suez was studied, using an earthquake from Egyptian National Seismic Network (ENSN) catalog from 7079 events that occurred between January 1997 and May 2010.The earthquakes is mainly concentrated in four zones; the first zone is located between latitude 27 – 27.5 and longitude 34 - 34.5 degrees in the southern entrance of the Gulf. The second zone is located...
To predict and mitigate the effects of future earthquakes in the West Africa, more information is needed regarding both, local earthquake sources and how seismic waves travel through the region. Velocity model gives access to direct assessment of underground shear properties, high-accuracy interpolation in both depth and range, important for environmental characterizing and protection....
The RSTT model was developed to account for the effects of crust and upper-mantle structure on regional seismic phase travel-times. RSTT was designed with real-time monitoring in mind and travel times can be computed on the fly in ~1ms. Originally the RSTT model only covered the Eurasia region. This was followed by numerous upgraded models that initially incorporated North America before the...
Global-scale tomographic images of the Earth’s seismic velocity structure provide key insights into the state and evolution of our planet, and thus the development of such models has been a mainstay in solid Earth geophysics research for more than three decades. Because of their predictive abilities, global-scale 3-D images are also capable of enhancing monitoring applications including...
In Brazil mining blast are systematically made in different locations with sufficient energy to be detected at distances up to 1000 km. However, the origin time is not accurately measured; because it´s not of a mining interest to determine this information. Particularly in the Carajás mine, located in the State of Pará, in northern Brazil at least one big blast is made by month, which could be...
The records of calibration chemical explosions from Semipalatinsk Test Site region recorded by near temporary stations allowed investigating the structure of attenuation field in the Earth crust and upper mantle at the region of Degelen and Balapan sites. The characteristics of short-period S-coda envelops were analyzed. It was determined that Balapan region having two large fault zones...
Velocity structure of the lithosphere-astenosphere system, to the depth of 350 km is obtained for the region of the Balkan Peninsula for the cells sized 1 degree by 1 degree. The models are obtained by the following sequence of methods and tools: surface-wave dispersion measurements and collection; 2D tomography of dispersion relations; non-linear inversion of cellular dispersion relations;...
A code for Optimized Non-Linear Inversion (ONLI) of surface-wave dispersion data is developed. It is based on Monte-Carlo numerical search method. The structure is modeled as a stack of horizontal homogeneous layers and S-wave velocity and thickens for some of the layers are parameterized. Velocity of P-wave and density of relevant layers are calculated by empirical or theoretical...
Broadband teleseismic P-waveforms recorded on ITZ station have been computed to isolate near-receiver Ps conversions originating from the Moho discontinuity at a depth of approximately 37 km. The strong trough immediately after the apparent direct P-wave on the station seems to indicate that ITZ may be underlain by a low velocity zone. Reasonably large amplitude arrivals exhibiting times and...
We have been studying characteristics of short-period shear wave attenuation field in the region of Nevada test site (NTS). We were analyzing recordings of underground nuclear explosions (UNEs) and earthquakes, obtained in 1975-2012 by stations ANMO, TUC and TPNV at epicentral distances up to 1000 km. A total number of 240 recordings were processed. Methods, based on an analysis of amplitude...
We present a 3D seismic velocity model of Iran generated using a joint inversion of body wave travel times and high-wavenumber filtered Bouguer gravity observations. The body wave dataset is derived from previous work on location calibration and includes over 1000 events that qualify as GT5. The associated arrival time dataset for these events include many direct crustal P and S phase...
Abstract Makran region, due to movement of the Arabian plate toward the Eurasia forming a subduction zone in South-East of Iran. We are using recorded data on stations of International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology. The "Single Back-Scattering Method" is used to estimate Qc. The relations of frequency dependence of coda wave quality factor for events up to 100km epicentral...
Inferring source term parameters for a radionuclide release is difficult, due to the large uncertainties in forward dispersion modelling as a consequence of turbulent diffusion in the Earth's atmosphere. Additional sources of error include the radionuclide measurements obtained from sensors. These measurements may either be subject to random fluctuations or are indications that the true...
Lagrangian particle models such as FLEXPART (FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model, http://flexpart.eu) are used for inverse modelling and prediction of transport and dispersion of trace species in the management of different kinds of emergencies, including nuclear accidents and CTBT applications. As the reliability of the model results is important, we deem it important to establish more...
TThe U.S. Department of Energy’s National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (DOE/NARAC) provides 24/7 high-fidelity tools and expert staff to predict and analyze the impacts of hazardous atmospheric releases, such as the recent Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident (Sugiyama et al., 2011: Health Physics 102(5), 493-508). Local-to-global scale meteorological and dispersion modeling...
For on-site inspection the radioactive noble gas isotope 37Ar is a definitive and unambiguous indicator of an underground nuclear explosion. In order to distinguish between natural and artificially elevated 37Ar the location-specific activity range in soils, rocks and the atmosphere were identified. Periodic atmospheric air measurements collected worldwide revealed a background level in the...
Cosmogenic radionuclides are often used as tracers for environmental processes, for example the three dimensional circulation of the atmosphere. The stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) mechanism is one important mechanism that is difficult to model and not well understood, partly due to a lack of available data of suitable tracers. The worldwide network created by the International...
Accurate atmospheric transport model forecasts can help detect violations of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and are important for decision support in case of nuclear incidents. An as accurate as possible forecast is desired, but unfortunately the forecast is prone to errors that are difficult to quantify. A collaboration between SCK•CEN and the Royal Meteorological Institute of...
Before being detected at the surface during OSI or in the atmosphere by IMS stations, radioactive gases migrate through heterogeneous rocks and soil. How much of the source term is emitted to the atmosphere? Can frozen or snow-covered soils prevent emission? How to define sampling strategies? Tracing experiments were conducted to investigate gas transport mechanisms in the subsurface. First,...
The problem of locating release sources causing detections in systems monitoring atmospheric radioactivity is of crucial importance in the area of verification of nuclear activities, such as CTBT monitoring. An analysis of radioxenon detections, most likely associated with a release from the third announced nuclear test in North Korea, has been performed using several different source location...
Inverse modelling plays an important role in identifying the amount of substances released into atmosphere during power plant accidents, volcano eruptions or CO2 emissions. The problem leads to minimization of the discrepancy between the measurements in atmosphere during a particular time period and the model predictions. First, we review the standard methods based on Tikhonov regularization...
Argon-37, with a longer half-life than radioxenons, is an excellent candidate for On-Site Inspection with a prolonged detection time window. However the natural background of argon-37 in the subsurface, due to cosmic ray and in situ produced neutron fluxes, can be up to several hundreds of mBq/m3, and varies spatially and temporally due to transport and production changes, especially in...
Ground contamination level due to dry and wet deposition can also be computed for this model. a- first step in the process of dose evaluation is the computation of air concentration of the released radio nuclides using appropriate atmospheric dispersion model. b- second step is to compute inhalation ,immersion and external gamma doses due to the passage of the plume(in case of continuous and...
Fluctuations in the ambient atmospheric pressure result in motion of air in porous fractured media. This mechanism, known as barometric pumping, transports gaseous species through unsaturated rocks to the atmosphere. A thorough assessment of the efficiency of barometric pumping for any fractured porous medium is lacking. A complete set of equations for the general case is written and solved...
Characterization of source from atmospheric radioactivity measurements is an essential task of National Data Center (NDC). One of the objectives of the atmospheric transport modelling is to locate areas that may contain the source at the origin of a set of measurements at IMS stations. The challenge lies in the wide variety of possible solutions, ranging from a single release to a combination...
Numerical modelling aims at providing solutions to mathematical equations describing physical phenomena. Already the mathematical models are approximations of reality. Additional simplifications are introduced while performing calculations using finite, spatial or spectral, discretisations of mathematical equations. Furthermore, non-resolved scales need to be parameterised. In this...
Data collected by the International Monitoring System (IMS) during 2009-2012 were used to study influence of precipitation on changes in 7Be concentrations in atmosphere. The significant decrease in 7Be concentrations, corresponding to measurements collected by stations located within Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is demonstrated. This effect can be attributed to the process of...
FLEXPART is a Lagrangian particle dispersion transport model which is originally designed for calculating the long-range and mesoscale dispersion of air pollutants from point sources. Through the years, these type of models have proven to be a very useful tool in an operational context for the protection of the population in case of accidents in a nuclear power plant. In the meantime, FLEXPART...
Activity and atomic ratios of long-lived radionuclides such as iodine-129 and plutonium-238,239,240 are the useful parameters for identifying above- or underground nuclear event when it is already not possible to detect short-lived radionuclides (the right time to determine was missed) as their values depend on the radionuclide source and the processes of their formation. In order to determine...
In the case of accidental appearance of radionuclides in water ecosystems the one-phase model cannot be properly employed to predict radionuclides migration and their accumulation zones. Application of the correct model of radionuclide behaviour in their build-up environment in water saturated soils is of great concern as well. A novel two-phase mathematical model was created that analytically...
Atmospheric dispersion models are used in case of accidental releases of radionuclides to minimize the population exposure and to assess short and long term environmental and sanitary impact. The present study is a sensitivity analysis of the IRSN’s short distance Gaussian model pX (part of the C3X operational platform), applied on the Fukushima disaster case. Results are compared with those...
Following production at depth by nuclear fission reactions or neutron activation, gases escape the nuclear cavity, partly filled with melted rocks. In variable hydrogeological and meteorological conditions, these gases have to migrate through heterogeneous rocks and soils before they could be detected at the surface by OSI operations or IMS stations. All these processes may hamper a "smoking...
Ar-37 as an indicator for underground nuclear explosions in the frame of an on-site-inspection depends on knowledge of the natural background and its variability. The Ar-37 production rate in the soil or rock matrix is proven to be spatially variable e.g as function of depth (Riedmann 2011, Johnson 2015). However, Ar-37 concentrations over time for the same location also scatter in the order...
Monitoring conducted at the Roselend Natural Laboratory (France) as well as during CTBTO field exercises raised questions about the influence of topographical effects on gas dynamics in the subsurface and at the surface. This would have to be taken into account when designing the sampling strategy to detect radioactive noble gases, and in particular radioxenon, during OSI operations, below a...
Long-rang atmospheric dispersion model named LADAS has been developed to evaluate dispersion patterns of the radionuclides released into the air after a nuclear accident. The model was validated by using measurements of the ETEX experiments, and it was also applied to assess the behavior of radionuclides released into the air from the Fukushima accident. After the Fukushima accident,...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty allows "Drilling to obtain radioactive samples." The objective of drilling is to obtain data to help clarify whether a nuclear explosion occurred. At any time during the OSI, the Inspection Team Leader may submit to the Executive Council a proposal to conduct drilling. A successful drilling operation will require careful planning and execution to...
Anisotropic modelling was carried out using 3D-PP full-azimuth full-offset reflection data acquired over a naturally fractured tight carbonate field, onshore Texas, USA. The processed data were inverted to generate anisotropic parameters used for modelling and fracture characterization of the carbonate reservoir currently experiencing production decline despite reservoir studies that suggested...
There have been a number of studies concerning underground migration of radionuclides from nuclear explosion test cavities at the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site) as part of the US Department of Energy's Hydrology and Radionuclide Migration Program. Radionuclides have been detected outside of the immediate vicinity of nuclear test explosion cavities that are...
Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14) demonstrated advancing maturity for CTBT on-site inspection (OSI) techniques. Drilling to recover relevant radiological samples, arguably the most physically intrusive and demanding of the allowed inspection techniques, was purposefully omitted from the exercise. At entry into force (EIF) the CTBTO must be ready to implement drilling as an OSI inspection...
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty On-Site Inspection (OSI) regimes ultimate technique is drilling to obtain radionuclide samples. This is not a common industrial practice and with the global norm against nuclear testing the skill set and equipment will have atrophied within the former testing community. OSI will therefore need to acquire not only a skilled crew and drill rig used to drilling...
Comoro-Islands defined through the extension and ascension of magma-activity is dated from the oldest-Island 'Mayotte’ ≈ 5.4 Ma, 'Moheli’ ≈ 2.2 Ma, 'Anjouan' ≈ 1.5 Ma, to Gde-Comore. Located within the Indian Ocean, the Islands are exposed to multiple seismic activities: Magmatic activity can generate earthquakes felt in land; Seismic events are considerable from regional geological...
An emission inversion system has been built based on the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model and a cost functional. The release estimates are found by minimizing the cost functional which mainly measures the differences between the model predictions and the actual air concentration measurements. A transfer coefficient matrix (TCM) defining the potential...
Global trends show an increasing damage from natural hazards. One possible reason of this is climate change that indirectly influence also to geological hazard as earthquake. Due to increase number of various natural hazard environment and buildings became more vulnerable and results from the earthquake with the same magnitude are more devastating. The Republic of Georgia, located on the East...
Geologic-tectonics, engineer-geologic, seismologic preconditions in area recently took placed of strong earthquakes in Uzbekistan: Kan, 19 July 2011, М=6.3, I=8 balls (MSK-64); Tuyabuguz 25 May 2013, M=5.6, I=7 balls; Marjanbulak 26 May, 2013, M=6.2, I=8 balls earthquakes were considered. Macroseismic data of Isfara-Batkent earthquake, 31 January 1977, M=6.3, I=8 balls took placed nearby Kan...
The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) is responsible for monitoring natural hazards in Iceland and operates real-time monitoring systems including the SIL seismic network, since 1991 and together with the University of Florence an infrasound network since 2010. IMO is the station operator for one seismic (IDA) station for CTBTO IMS. The SIL network covers the volcanic zones and seismically...
We focus on the main active seismic zones in the area of Ulaanbaatar which can have the main impact on the seismic risk of the Capital of Mongolia. A seismic activity is taking place near and within Ulaanbaatar area since April of 2005. The seismic swarm observed by local permanent network has reveals the significant increase of seismic activity in the Ulaanbaatar area. For precise study of...
IMS arrays of hydrophones have been placed in the Sound Fixing And Range (SOFAR) channel to detect explosions. Only few stations are necessary, since the SOFAR channel hardly attenuates acoustic energy, i.e., sound waves. As an example, small explosions of tens of kilos of explosive material can be detected over ranges of thousands to ten thousand kilometer. The propagation of sound is...
Bogazici University – KOERI (Turkey) is providing a Tsunami Warning System to Eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas since 1 July 2012 as a Candidate Tsunami Service Provider within the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Early Warning and Mitigation System in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (ICG/NEAMTWS) Framework. KOERI continues to...
ABSTRACT Microtremor measurements are useful for determining local site effects in seismically active regions (such as Jordan) where ground motions are few, and in urban or industrial areas where noise level is high. Due to variations in geological and geotechnical characteristics of the subsurface strata, each site responds differently when subjected to an earthquake (or a tremor).....
During 2008 a cluster of nine earthquakes was detected in the northwestern region of Austria, which until then was unremarkable in terms of naturally occurring seismicity. The events (estimated magnitudes 2.0-3.8) were located at depths of about 10-20km in the general vicinity of Braunau (13.5°E) between the Bohemian Massif and the Eastern Alps, in an area of elevated geothermal heatflow...
Samples of the radioactive fallout of deposition and fresh milk had been taken in the city of Buenos Aires and the surroundings since 1960. A statistical procedure was used to analyse the temporary variation of the Sr-90 and Cs-137 concentrations. The obtained results allowed assessing the environmental impact and radiological exposure of the population in South America. The objective of this...
Armenia is a part of the Caucasus, which is one of the most active segments of Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt. The seismicity of Armenian Upland relates to the Arabian-Eurasian plates’ collision, which is characterized by diffusive distribution of shallow earthquakes of various magnitudes. The strong shallow earthquakes are expressed by well pronounced active surface faulting. Comparison of...
In this study, we create worst-case scenarios of tsunami earthquake excited by Manila Trench megathrust and assess the impact to the Vietnamese coast. The tsunami propagation is numerically computed by using the COMCOT open source code. The simulation results show that the Vietnamese coast can be divided into three parts with different levels of tsunami hazards. According to the worst case...
On August, 28th, 2014, the effusive „Holuhraun" fissure eruption started near the vent of the Bardarbunga volcano leading to SO2 emissions of up to 35000 tons per day for several weeks. Whereas concentrations of up to 21000 micrograms per cubic meter measured in Icelandic towns did not come as a surprise, remarkable concentrations could be found in other parts of Europe. This was especially...
On 24 July 2014, a civilian aircraft AH5017 from airline Air Algeria, took off from the international airport of Ouagadougou at 00h55mn GMT with 118 passengers on board. Its destination was Algiers international airport in Algeria. One hour later, the flight AH5017, ceased all communications with the control tower in Ouaga and that of Niger. Niger authorities had just taken over the...
This study is oriented towards the reduction of seismic hazards through studying the dynamic characteristics of surface geology, based on ground ambient vibration. Thirty six direct records of ground ambient vibration along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea were obtained, spectrally analyzed and the dominant resonance frequency of each were applied as an input parameter in this study....
The National Data Centre in Ghana five years on has made tremendous progress towards the goals of the CTBTO. The data centre which was established in 2010 with the aim of monitoring compliance of the CTBT has also benefited the country in the monitoring of seismic activity. We are integrating IMS seismic data with our national data in the monitoring. The national earthquake catalogue and...
Earthquake focal mechanism parameters obtained from earthquake monitoring system is generated automatically in the output. The output contains the data and information required for tsunami modeling. Do unified integration to create a system of monitoring information on the earthquake and tsunami early warning system that can be run in parallel. to connect the network to the server, it takes an...
We determine the empirical formula for local magnitude scale in West Java region, Indonesia. We used amplitude data from 10 network station of InaTEWS, including LEM station from CTBTO network. There is 162 local earthquakes that occurred during 2010 – 2014. The magnitude range is between 3.0 – 6.0. We derived –log A0 distance correction function for ML based on its original definition. We...
We derived ML scale for Uganda using waveform data from temporary broadband seismic network deployed in Uganda and permanent IMS broadband station, AS103 MBAR. We used 54 earthquakes recorded between July 2007 and November 2008. We first determined hypocenters of these earthquakes using P and S phase arrivals, most of their epicenters associated with the western rift of the EARS. To develop...
On 11 April 2012 was occurred large earthquake with Mw = 8.6 in western part of Sumatra. This earthquake was unique because did not occurred in subduction zone but in outer rise of Indo-Australia plate. The 2012 outer rise earthquakes have strike-slip type for their source mechanism and generate small tsunami. We estimate the slip distribution of the 2012 outer rise earthquake using inversion...
Seismic records of Iran indicate the occurrence of many devastating seismic events, some of which were in densely populated areas in the vicinity of major faults. Iran, as an example, is surrounded by many active faults. Therefore, an earthquake early warning can be a useful short term solution to reduce damages and potential casualties of large earthquakes. In this study one of the necessary...
The fast growing of web-based development and technology for sharing geodata and dissemination of geospatial information has turn in helping decision making to manage natural hazard. Not only in natural hazard, web-based provide a platform for integrating geography information system with other businesses in the area of location based and traffic optimization. On the other hand, early warning...
The network for atmospheric radioactivity monitoring has been developing since 1959 by the Bulgarian Hydro-meteorological service. The time and space variations of airborne and deposited beta activity are included in long term data records providing impact assessment of the different radioactive pollution sources. The atmospheric radioactivity monitoring is strongly supported by Atmospheric...
Mega-thrust earthquakes are anticipated to occur in the Nankai Trough, southwest Japan. In the source areas, we installed seafloor seismic network (DONET) in order to monitor seismicity, crustal deformations and tsunamis. DONET system consists of 20 stations, which is composed of strong-motion and broadband seismometers, quartz and differential pressure gauges, hydrophone, and thermometer. The...
Himalayan belt bounded by 25o -40o N and 65o -85o E have investigated for seismogenic source identification and earthquake hazard assessment. An analysis of database for the period 1853 to Oct. 10, 2005 indicates that the seismic activities in whole area are linked with the ubiquitous tectonic features of the region. Study accomplishes that Hindukush and its surrounding areas are highly active...
The verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) will be assured by the global alarm system currently being established for the CTBT Organization (CTBTO). The International Data Centre (IDC) is a central element of the CTBT verification regime. It collects, processes and analyses data originating from the 337 facilities of the International Monitoring System (IMS). The...
This research is the study of historical data to be modeled predictions earthquake return period further events. Learning system data using ANFIS technique. In this technique the historical data set compiled into intervals of earthquake occurrence daily average in a year. Output to be obtained is a model return period earthquake events daily average in a year. Parameter source mechanism is...
In this paper we present and discuss the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis carried out in Morocco.This region was historically struck by strong earthquakes.It was particularly affected by several important earthquakes distributed in the territory of the country and along off-shore zones. In particular northern part has been most affected by earthquakes in the past few decades. The last...
The modernization of Slovak national network of seismic stations was finished in 2005. Since that time there was no effort made to modify original definition of local magnitude ML for region of Slovakia. The purpose of this study is to determine same local magnitude for all stations for one observed event. Peak amplitudes on simulated Wood-Anderson instruments were analyzed for set of events...
Manifestations of mud volcanism are widespread in Azerbaijan. The number of mud volcanoes in the country located on land and at sea exceeds 250. Mud volcanism is an interesting natural phenomenon. Many mud volcanoes are active at the present time. In the present study we evaluate both the static and dynamic strains induced by earthquakes in the substratum of mud volcanoes. We studied the...
A regional study of ground motion scaling parameters is presented for the region surrounding the Central Turkey. In order to emprically obtain the scaling relationships for high frequency S-wave motion, regressions are carried out on three component broadband seismograms, all recorded within a hypocentral distance of 250 km.The data set used in this study consists of 120 earthquake events with...
Geophysical monitoring system has been built in Kazakhstan under the support of CTBTO, AFTAC, and other organizations. Twelve seismic and 2 infrasound stations as well as National Data Center receive data, which is used to solve global, regional and local tasks. The quality of damaging data preparation on nuclear explosions has been improved for the on-site implementation in support of CTBT,...
The Seismic Research Centre of the University of the West Indies has operated a medium-sized seismic network to monitor earthquake and volcanic activity in the Commonwealth island territories in the Eastern Caribbean since 1952. Over the past two decades a series of regional and international disasters have illustrated the need to fortify the existing surveillance system capabilities and...
The 1921 earthquake was occurred in the Java trench and located between two tsunami earthquake of 1994 (Banyuwangi) and 2006 (Pangandaran) south of Java. The 1921 earthquake also generate tsunami that recorded in tide gauge of Cilacap with maximum height of tsunami is around 10 cm. From paleo tsunami study we found the tsunami deposit of the 1921 earthquake in around of Cilacap, Yogyakarta,...
Two shallow great earthquakes Mw 8.5 and Mw 8.1 ( h < 60 km) occurred in outer rise of the Indian Ocean Ridge on April 11, 2012 with elapse time around 2 hours. These earthquakes are classified as doublet earthquakes. Referring of the earthquake parameters only (location, depth and magnitude), the first earthquake was estimated to trigger of the great tsunami event. These earthquakes felt and...
Il y a de nombreux indices d’Uranium au Tchad. La majeure partie de ces indices est de type filonien lié aux granites alcalins à syénites. Des indices de ce type sont connus au Tibesti, dans le massif Central et le Mayo Kébbi, mais c’est dans le Tibesti qu’ils sont les plus nombreux. Citons entre autres: - Yédri situé au Nord d’Aouzou où 14 indices uranifères ont été signalés dans les zones...
The frequency magnitude distribution of earthquake in Bangladesh is measured by the b-values. 116 earthquakes of magnitude 3.1R to 6.2 R were recorded in Bangladesh during the period April 1997 to May 2006. To estimate b-value the least square method has been used in Richter Gutenburg frequency magnitude relation as a linear equation, and thus the b-value is obtained 0.71, which is lesser then...
Java, Bali and West of Nusa Tenggara are earthquake prone areas. One efforts to minimize the disaster impact is carried out through seismic hazard research. This study to analyze the earthquake hazard and isoseismal for the study area. The research include collecting and processing seismic data, seismic sources modeling and characterization, earthquake hazard and isoseismal analysis. Seismic...
In the late 1970s a programme to find a suitable site for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste was launched in Namaqualand-Bushmanland region. Vaalputs was identified and has been operational since 1986, and seismicity is one of several key factors monitored as part of on-going disposal operations. The seismic history of the region is evaluated so as to assess its long-term stability...
Kyrgyzstan, which is located in a zone of collision between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian lithosphere plates, is prone to large earthquakes as shown by its historical seismicity. In particular, between the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th one, several destructive earthquakes struck Kyrgyzstan, such as the Belovodskoe earthquake of August 3, 1885 (maximum intensity IX), that...
Over the years, earthquakes have been widely reported in Namibia and the first recorded earthquake occurred in 1910. Since then, there have been more than 150 recorded earthquakes reported by the various regional and international seismic monitoring institutions. Currently, seven seismological stations located across the country form the national Seismological Network of Namibia. Seven...
Armenia lies within the complex zone of continental collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. The Arabian plate is moving northward at the rate of 20-30 mm/year and collides with the Eurasian plate. The Anatolian and the Iranian blocks are squeezed westward and eastward respectively. In the present work, on the basis of analysis, kinematic and dynamic interpretation of individual...
On February 17th 2014, an earthquake occurred around the mountain of Merbabu in Central of Java Indonesia. According to the Meteorological Climatological and Geophysical Agency of Indonesia (BMKG) the earthquake was about M= 2.7 of magnitude with 10 km of the depth. However, this small earthquake was strong enough to be felt by people surrounding the source and also caused 46 homes in five...
Many places over Northwest Peninsular Malaysia experienced facing the giant waves induced by the large magnitude of earthquake during the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman mega earthquake. A number of scientific studies have been implemented in order to understand the unexpected phenomenon as to improve the current National Disaster Mitigation Plan. Seventy five sets of tsunami numerical simulations are...
Thick sedimentation, high density of sea water, anticlockwise oceanic current, frame shaped Bay of Bengal, shallow continental shelf, near tectonic subduction zone all together increased the tsunami vulnerability in Bangladesh coast. The relation between earthquake magnitude M and tsunami magnitude m is m = 2.30 M- 16.20. The magnitude of the earthquake M is 6.3 to 6.8 only small tsunami with...
Using of seismic and infrasound data of IMS stations together with the data from Ukrainian NDC allows to monitor geophysical hazards such as earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, explosions, bolides, etc. A multidisciplinary approach had used for searching anomal geophysical predictors in the Vrancea region and the Antarctic Peninsula region, as well as for building of model of the early warning...
The Baleakanta project was initiated in 2013 with the goal of establishing a database of large cetacean calls recorded at the IMS hydrophones. These calls are recorded on a continual basis at the six hydrophone stations of the network, whose main purpose is to serve the mission of detecting nuclear explosions in the oceans. The calls are scientifically valuable as a means of studying the...
The CENALT (CENtre d’ALerte aux Tsunamis) is responsible for the French NTWC (National Tsunami Warning Centre). Since Its entry in operation, its objective is to transmit a message in less than fifteen minutes for any earthquake that could trigger a tsunami in the Western Mediterranean Sea and the North-East Atlantic Ocean. The data collected from French installations and from institutions...
The magnitude of completeness, Mc, mapped for Aswan Seismic network Earthquakes Catalog. Mc was estimated based on the maximum curvature method. It is found to be 2.1 for the entire interface catalog. In all catalogs studied, Mc was strongly heterogeneous. The magnitude of completeness, Mc varies from 1.2 to 2.5. The lowest Mc is observed eastern side of Kalabsha fault and the highest Mc...
Ujung Kulon is located at westernmost of Java Island, Indonesia. In this area there is the national park that have important role to protect the habitat of the Javan rhinoceros. Based on historical of the significant earthquake have occurred in Sunda Trench, there is seismic gap in southwest of Sunda strait. By scalling law calculation, this seismic gap potentially causes the large earthquake...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) builds and maintains the International Monitoring System (IMS) primarily for the use of treaty-related verification tasks. Of the civil and scientific applications for the data from the IMS, the most widespread and publicized of these is in tsunami warning. Following the 2004 Sumatra earthquake which resulted in a devastating...
Until the end of XX century it was considered that seismically active are only south, south-east and partially east regions of Kazakhstan. The maps of seismic zoning of Kazakhstan were constructed according to this information. With putting into operation of new IMS stations on the territory of Kazakhstan and in neighboring countries, the knowledge about seismicity of Kazakhstan territory has...
Azerbaijan is caught in the active continent-continent collision of the Arabian plate with Eurasia. These regional tectonic processes give rise to earthquakes that have devastated the Caucasus hroughout recorded history. Collision and seismic processes involve changes in the underground mass distribution with consequent modification of the gravity. Gravity measurements are able to detect such...
Beyond of a view historical tsunamis in the wastern part Sumatra as ; Aceh tsunami December 26, 2004 and Aceh tsunami April 11, 2012 have given several questions for the majority the common people. This study aims to analyze the shape and location of ocean bottom earthquake source as the cause of the tsunami wave propagation , by performing a cross section in the study area bathymetry maps....
The value of airborne technologies to an OSI was underscored during the Integrated Field Exercise in Jordan (IFE14) in which flight navigation, gamma spectroscopy and multi-spectral instruments (MSIR) were installed into the airframe of an AS332 Super Puma helicopter. Total airborne operations exceeded 17 flight hours and data acquired by system sensors and subsequently processed successfully...
The Seismic Aftershock Monitoring System (SAMS) is an important method during the initial period of an On-site Inspection (OSI) to narrow down the search area and identify the location of a possible underground nuclear explosion. A network of tripartite mini-arrays and single three-component seismic stations can be deployed during an OSI to detect and localize small aftershocks in the vicinity...
Having in mind that the sole purpose of an on-site inspection is to clarify whether a nuclear explosion has been carried out in violation of the CTBT, the inspection team applies an information based search to direct the conduct of inspection activities for the collection of information. Such an approach requires that one or more polygons, i.e., regions of any shape and size that enclose a...
For On-Site Inspection under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, measurement of Argon-37 is considered an important technique, as it is a definitive and unambiguous indicator of an underground nuclear explosion. A new Argon-37 detection system for OSI purposes named MARDS-II was developed by the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry in 2013, on the basis of the MARDS-IA system and...
The visual observation (VOB, including MSIR) component of an IFE creates the framework for integrating the physical aspects of the inspection area with the technical activities of the exercise. Thus, the inspection team (IT) should demonstrate integration of VOB techniques with all other technologies. An important part of an IFE scenario is to provide a plausible context that the IT must try...
The number of samples taken during an OSI could be large as they could result from different field mission and area of interests. In order to achieve a good throughput of analyses to support effectively the search logic, it could be useful to run a cumulative measurement, ganging a group of samples. The ganging rationale is related to the location of the samples, to the type or to the field...
One major goal of an integrated field exercise (IFE) is to learn technical lessons from the experiences of the participants. The authors of this abstract had the opportunity to spend a number of hours in the Base of Operations (BOO) radionuclide laboratory during Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14). During this experience, many lessons were learned that will be shared in this poster. While...
The authors will sketch the technical capabilities of a 10-person team operating a mobile lab and portable equipment against a nuclear anomaly that could be a contained underground nuclear explosion. Survey, including flight, carborne, and backpack, help locate an area for investigation, then in-situ survey and sample collections can find isotopic anomalies in concentration, location, and...
A qualitative analysis of regime members’ positions regarding the role, characteristics and importance of challenge-type inspections in multilateral arms control regimes is undertaken through a comparative case study of challenge (CIs) and on-site (OSIs) inspection mechanisms provided for under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),...
In situ gamma spectroscopy and environmental sampling are two techniques that were applied during the IFE14 in Jordan. In situ gamma spectroscopy was used in the IFE as a "gamma survey technique" but actually has comparable detection sensitivity for many radionuclides to the laboratory assay of environmental particulate samples. The IFE illustrated the logistical limitations of sampling. In...
The scenario for Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14) included the use of buried sources to approximate radiological deposition on the ground of sufficient strength to be detectable by radiation survey and in situ measurements. Ten 40-MBq Co-60 sources were used as surrogates for a large radioiodine deposition. The sources were buried and retrieved each day that field missions were in the...
One of the detection modalities available for use in an On-Site-Inspection (OSI) is an aerial radiation survey which could detect the presence of nuclear explosion relevant radioactive material at the surface of the ground. Aerial surveys offer the potential of covering large geographical areas in relatively short amounts of time with a reasonable level of sensitivity; and allow access to...
The simulation of an event for the 2014 Integrated Field Exercise (IFE14) involved many aspects for consideration such as whether the event was CTBT compliant or non-compliant, the nature of the triggering event, as well as issues associated with implementation of the scenario. The IFE14 Scenario Team designed a scenario that took all of these issues, as well as others, into consideration. One...
The 2014 IFE was a challenging test. The scenario included a surface release and deposition of relevant radionuclides. From an overall standpoint, the exercise was a good test. However, it lacked in some key areas because of the inability to realistically produce and distribute short-lived fission products on the ground surface surrounding the suspect site. RN signatures and samples were...
During a CTBT on-site inspection (OSI) the inspection team (IT) collects information and data necessary for the purpose of the inspection in accordance with its mandate. Following the lessons learned from IFE08 processes and systems concerned with data flow, information handling and management were designed, tested and finally utilized during the OSI Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14). The...
Several participants in the 2014 Integrated Field Exercise (IFE14), two of whom served as Control Team (CT) members for the Operations Support Centre (OSC) during the exercise, present observations on the following activities: (1) the communication process between the OSC and International Data Centre (IDC) and the nature of those communications, (2) the interactions among the exercise...
The radionuclide laboratory is a key component to analyse environmental samples and gamma emission spectra for trace amounts of nuclear explosion relevant nuclides. During 4 weeks operations in Jordan for the 2014 Integrated Field Exercise (IFE14), more than 150 samples and in-situ spectra were successfully analysed to establish baseline information on the Inspection Area, map the presence and...
Technologies, procedures and resources of the On-Site Inspection exercised through Inspection Team Functionality (ITF) proved to be a fool-proof maneuver considered the final results of the Integrated Field Exercise - IFE14. Yet, the same technologies in tropical environments tend to fail, particularly the funneling of 1000km2 (IA) prior to apply conclusive techniques such as Radionuclide (RN)...
The IFE14 scenario and play provided a tremendous example of the power of imagery when it comes to identifying areas where changes to the surface have occurred. In the run up to the IFE14 the PTS procured high resolution satellite imagery to be used as a possible data inject for both visible and 8-band formats. Our poster shows the "what if" of utilizing the full power of imagery to the IFE14...
A high throughput system for processing and detection of radioxenon for On-Site Inspection (OSI) purposes has been developed at FOI during the last years and here the system design, performance, and experience from operation during IFE14 will be presented. The prototype was delivered to CTBTO for training of operators and initial testing in the beginning of 2014 and then used during the...
During an OSI, ensuring the chain of custody of the samples collected in the field is of paramount importance. The labelling of the samples should be easy to use, reliable, resistant to hard weather conditions and should be readable in the OSI laboratory. The actual methodology for the chain of custody implies that the labels of the samples are 2D adhesive barcode, attached to the samples...
Late last year, the Preparatory Commission carried out the largest field activity conducted by the Organization since its inception, in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Integrated Field Exercise 2014. The IFE required focused, cross-divisional cooperation and effort within the Commission to further develop OSI equipment, techniques and processes towards operational status. The exercise was...
The Seismic Aftershock Monitoring System (SAMS) has the aim to detect and localize small aftershocks in the vicinity of a possible explosion within an inspection area (IA) of an OSI. The success of SAMS depends on the main elements, hardware, software, deployment strategy, the search logic and not least the effective use of personnel. All elements of SAMS were tested and improved during the...
Airborne Multi-spectral and Infra-Red (MSIR)imaging was deployed during IFE14 and data was collected, analysed and used. Dr Palmer attended the IFE14 when the MSIR suite was deployed as an Observer. He will present his observations and thoughts on the use of MSIR in this talk.
This presentation describes a new geomorphometric approach that enhances understanding of underground nuclear test sites, illustrated by the North Korean exemplar, including the geospatial context of the previously recorded event locations and their geologic setting. The "real world" geo-positional accuracy (beyond that possible using only relative re-location) can be brought to within a few...
The East Asia Regional NDC Workshop (EARNW) has been held every year since 2012 for the purpose of capacity development and cooperation of the NDCs in the East Asian region. Using a hypothetical event of interest, a common exercise on waveform (SHI) and radionuclide (RN) data analyses in conjunction with atmospheric transport modelling (ATM) was conducted prior to and results discussed at the...
Nuclear reactors and radiopharmaceutical facilities are responsible for large portions of nuclear signatures. The emissions being substantially dependent on type of production facility is a challenge to CTBT but can be minimized by measuring emissions directly at the facility and problem of source location addressed. Although radionuclide stations detect radionuclides, composition/activity...
The Republic of Kazakhstan is a unique state combining its modern nuclear-free status with a serious nuclear past. There is a large number of radiation-hazardous objects of various types throughout the territory of Kazakhstan: the sites of nuclear testing, research and energy nuclear plants, organizations and plants of uranium mining and processing industry, oil fields. The particular public...
NDC Preparedness Exercises (NPE) are regularly performed dealing with fictional cases of potential treaty violations to practice the combined analysis of all CTBT verification technologies. The discussion of results at NDC Workshops enhances the mutual exchange of information between NDC and also with the PTS. The scenario of the NPE2013 was the most complex so far. A fictitious accusing State...
mb:Ms is one of the four current experimental provisional event screening criteria applied by the International Data Centre. The use of mb:Ms, either for screening or as a discriminant, has a long history based on the empirical observation that for a given body-wave magnitude, mb, earthquakes tend to have a larger surface-wave magnitude, Ms, than underground explosions. However, the physical...
The East Asia Regional NDC Workshop (EARNW) has been held every year since 2012 for the purpose of capacity development of the NDCs in the East Asia region. A common exercise on SHI and radionuclide (RN) data analysis has been conducted in the workshops using a hypothetical target event. The authors designed and organized the common exercises of RN in the EARNW2014 (Ulaanbaatar). A chemical...
Generally CTBTO (Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization) doesn’t care about artificial explosive that is being received low-yield in accordance with the criteria of nuclear detection. But, at the time that North Korea conduct a nuclear test, it should not be overlooked that the scale of the earthquake detection criteria below. Because DPRK is trying to conceal their nuclear...
Researchers have performed an experiment to simulate the near-field deposition pattern of radionuclides released in a small-scale vent from an underground nuclear explosion. High-purity lanthanum oxide powder was activated in the Washington State University research reactor to produce short-lived 140La. The particulate source material was injected into the atmosphere using a CO2 gerb ("air...
As a part of East Asia Regional NDC Workshop 2014 Mongolia, the common exercise took place in regards to event location and discrimination of the seismic event presumed mining explosion near China-DPRK border. This event was so small (ML=2.0) that only 2 seismic stations, KSRS and USRK, could detect seismic signals in IMS seismic observation network. Interestingly, 1 IMS Infrasound station,...
Remarkable activity concentrations of Ba/La-140 occurred at IMS radionuclide stations JPP37 (Okinawa) and RUP58 (Ussurysk) mid of May 2010. In those days also an elevated Xe-133 level was measured at JPX38 (Takasaki). Additional regional measurements of radioxenon were reported in the press. The radionuclide analysis gives evidence for the presence of a nuclear fission source between 10 and 12...
Nuclear event zero time is one of the key topics when detecting radionuclides in a sample. One can calculate the time based on parent-daughter relation, such as La140/Ba140, Nb95/Zr95, Y92/Sr92 ratios. Alternative method comprise understanding the nuclear phenomena and by comparing independent (no parent-daughter relationship) isotopes to each other. Due to fractionation, it would be...
Three underground tests conducted by DPRK in 2006, 2009, and 2013 were measured by small aperture seismic array "Mikhnevo", which has been operated by the Institute of Geospheres Dynamics since 2004. This array is designed for the purposes of regional seismic monitoring. It has aperture of approximately 1 km and includes ten vertical and two 3-C stations. Sampling rate is 200 counts per...
Recent studies have demonstrated the utility of GPS data collected by the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for detecting underground nuclear explosions (UNE), earthquakes, tsunamis, and other large explosive events. In addition, low-frequency radio interferometry data observed by the Very Large Array (VLA) have been shown to capture the signature of the Hunters Trophy UNE conducted at...
Claimed seismological evidence of an explosion in North Korea, at about 0009 hours on 12 May 2010 (UTC), has been published by Zhang and Wen in Seismological Research Letters (Jan 2015). This is of great interest to those, who had studied the seismicity of the North Korean test site for days prior to May 12 (which radionuclide studies had identified as the time period of the source of...
From the 1960’s through the late 1980’s, the Soviet Union conducted 122 Peaceful Nuclear Explosions across its territory. These PNEs are now very important to the seismological community as Ground Truth (GT) events. The PNE locations are widely distributed, thus GT0-1 locations, meaning that the true location is known to within 1 km or better, are used as calibration events for developing...
We have already applied a formal inverse modelling method to the Xe-133 observations in April 2013. It is a Bayesian methodology and is thus inherently capable to account for uncertainties of model and measurements which must be provided a priori. A source estimate is obtained by optimizing an objective function in a way that the discrepancy between model simulations and samples is minimized...
Our analysis uses source-receptor sensitivities calculated with FLEXPART and ECMWF data on 0.25 degree resolution and an output grid of 20km resolution. Xe-133 measurements at Takasaki and four surrounding stations are included, with the three significant detections at Takasaki, plus non-detections / not significant detections before and after. The inversion follows a Bayesian approach and...
This paper presents an evaluation of 238U, 235U, 137Cs and 133Xe in soil samples taken at two sites located in Douala-Cameroon, using gamma spectroscopy based Broad Energy Germanium Detector (BEGe6530).. The traces of 137Cs and 133Xe discovered in analysed samples call for further investigations to search for the origin of these radionuclides, noting that fallouts from nuclear tests...
From several studies in 2012 and 2013 on detections at IMS and other national radionuclide stations, the occurrence of a low-yield nuclear explosion within North Korea in April/May 2010 was inferred. The presumed explosion was assumed small, because no seismological evidence could be found, contrary to the case of the announced nuclear explosions in 2006, 2009 and, subsequently, in 2013....
The event in North Korea on February 12 was confidently registered by all station of Main Centre of Special Monitoring including primary IMS station PS45. The information about event was processed very quick and forwarded to superior authorities. The notification of operational duty officer about event on the results of processing of digital waveform was made 3 minutes after the arrival of the...
Global nuclear test fallout, the large scale nuclear accidents at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) in 1986 and at the Fukushima Daiichi NPP in 2011 caused a widespread dispersion of technogenic radionuclides all over the world. These events have proven that radionuclides can reach territories from the source even at a distance of thousand kilometres under favourable meteorological...
The aim of this research is to determine the high precision location of the DPRK M5.1 February 12th, 2013 nuclear test earthquake using relocation algorithm of Modified Joint Hypocenter Determination (MJHD) and Double Difference (DD) using IDC-CTBTO, BMKG and global seismic stations respectively. We simultaneously relocated this event using 3 datasets including 2006 and 2009 nuclear test and...
The archive of the Institute of seismology of the National Academy of sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic (IS NAS KR) in Bishkek contains hundreds of thousands of historical analogue seismograms since 1927 from in total 166 seismic stations (permanent and temporary), which have been operated on Kyrgyz territory. The standard equipment at all these stations was Kirnos SKM-3 and SKD seismometers. In...
The NDC Preparedness Exercises (NPE) are regularly performed dealing with fictitious treaty violations to practice the combined analysis of CTBT verification technologies. These exercises should help to evaluate the effectiveness of analysis procedures applied at NDCs and the quality, completeness and usefulness of IDC products. The exercise trigger of NPE2013 is a combination of a...
During the last century, Sudan witnessed numerousfall of meteorite bodies in different parts of the country. The first fall of meteorite reported in Sudan dates back to 1932;that was a 3.2kg body known as the Khor Temiki meteorite.The second meteorite fall was in1966referred to as the Umm Ruwaba meteorite with a mass of 1.7kg. The Kingai meteorite, which is the third one, hit the earth in 1976...
Technical representatives from 12 NDCs participated in the 3rd (2014) East Asia Regional NDC Workshop held July 29 – August 1, 2014, at Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The PTS selected a magnitude 2.8 event near the China-Korea border for the workshop’s Common Exercise session. Seven teams presented seismic relocation results utilizing the standard Geiger inversion method. They only differed in the...
In the absence of performing on-site measurements of noble gases emanating from an actual underground nuclear explosion (UNE), other approaches must be used to understand the nature of radioxenon and Ar-37 signatures that potentially provide a "smoking gun" indication of the occurrence of a UNE. Surrogate chemical tracers either pumped into old explosion cavities or released during a...
Three explosion events recorded by stations MDJ and BJT on October 9, 2006，May 25, 2009 and Feburary 12，2013 were analyzed and researched, respectively. Both stations belong to Global Sesimic Network (GSN). The mean ratios of the maximum amplitudes and the power spectrum densities are about 2.3 and 2.7 respectively for the 2013 event and the 2009 event. The ratios for 2013 event and 2006 are...
We have developed a new, blind and fully automatic teleseismic depth estimation method, insensitive to epistemic uncertainties due to depth-phase picking and identification. It consists of a modification of the cepstral analysis (Letort et al., 2014), which aims to detect surface reflected (pP, sP) waves at teleseismic distances (30°-90°) through the study of the spectral holes in the shape of...
North Korea conducted underground nuclear explosions on October 9, 2006 (M 4.2), May 25, 2009 (M4.7) and February 12, 2013 (M 5.1). We determined depths and source characteristics of thos enuclear tests. The North Korean nuclear tests were recorded by the teleseismic arrays of ASAR, FINES, NVAR, NOA. PDAR, WRA and YKA as well as regional stations. We selected the pronounced coherent spectral...
As a part of the Source Physics Experiment (SPE) site characterization, Sandia National Laboratories, in conjunction with HK Exploration, deployed a large (13 metric ton) seismo acoustic hammer source at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in December 2014. During early field testing of the hammer source we found that as the mass hit the ground a significant downward deflection of the...
The surface wave magnitude (Ms) compared to the body-wave magnitude (Mb) constitutes a robust discriminant between tectonic earthquakes and underground explosions. However, the use of this discriminant becomes difficult for relatively small magnitude seismic events that do not generate sufficiently large Rayleigh and Love wave amplitudes at teleseismic distances. The MS VMAX magnitude defined...
The UK/Scottish Governments and wind energy industry commissioned research to determine the seismic vibration generated by modern wind turbines. Seismic measurements were made at three separate wind farms with different turbine types. Wind velocity data from the turbines were kindly made available by the farm operators. Turbines generate seismic energy not only at spectral peaks associated...
Solve the inverse problem, which is aimed at modeling a discrete frequency spectrum of seismic body waves generated by artificially weak point explosion or a natural earthquake (M ≤ 4). Proposed a spherical model of the hollow area of the point explosion and used a well-known analytical method for modeling the hydro-mechanical oscillations of a liquid drop. Innovation in the applied work is...
The large 28 March 2005 Nias earthquake (Mw 8.6) occured on megathrust of the Sumatra subduction zone and generated a small tsunami. We estimated the slip distribution of the 2005 Nias earthquake using joint inversion of teleseismic, geodetic, and tsunami waveforms. We used 5 tide gauge stations around Indian Ocean, 9 GPS stations from Sumatran GPS array (SuGar), and 15 seismic station of IRIS...
First infrasound stations in the USSR were installed in 1954. By 1991, the network consisted of 25 infrasound stations, 3 of them were located on the territory of Kazakhstan. These are stations in Kurchatov, in Borovoye Observatory, and in Talgar Observatory. A microbarograph in Talgar Observatory was installed in 1962; it recorded large number of air nuclear explosions conducted at...
A system based on four technologies has been established to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Three of them, so called waveform technologies (seismic, hydroacoustic and infrasound), help to detect and locate events. Infrasound technology, based on detection of low frequency acoustic waves is the most appropriate for detection of atmospheric sources....
Cabled offshore observatories have been deployed since the 1970s in Japan, which traditionally consist of ocean-bottom seismometers (OBSs) and pressure gauges (PGs) with high sampling dataset. This kind of observatory allowed us to examine the mechanism of tsunami generation directly in the tsunami source. In the conventional offshore observatory, however, OBS and PG are located a few...
Based on the tectonic setting in northern Moluccas, there is double subduction called Sangihe – Halmahera subduction zone. As a result of this double subduction activity, the northern Moluccas become a very active area of earthquakes. The historical earthquake data recorded that between the years 1600 – 2007 have occurred 2800 earthquakes and 10 tsunamis. On 15 November 2014 was occurred an...
Detecting small earthquakes is a challenge in large, sparsely populated regions such as Greenland, where local seismographs are few and far between. Earthquake swarms consisting of tens to hundreds of shallow earthquakes with magnitudes less than 4 occur in Greenland even though it is a tectonically stable, intraplate environment. The enormous distances between events and detecting stations...
Calibration of explosion sources, via quarry blast monitoring is an important seismological ingredient for establishing a regional seismic nuclear discriminant. To create this calibration we are fortunate to have access to a sequence of 1790 three component recordings of quarry blasts, shot from March 2002 to January 2015. The centroid of these blasts has an estimated location 36.3E and...
Development of renewable wind-generated energy is being pursued by many signatory States of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as an alternative to traditional energy resources. In Canada, wind power capacity has increased by ~400% in the last 20 years. As wind power generation facilities increase in size and number, encroachment upon International Monitoring System (IMS) stations can...
An earthquake M5.5 occurred in the Vrancea region (Romania) 22 November 2014. IMS seismic array PS45 and two Ukrainian NDC infrasound arrays recorded signal at distances of 330 and 570 kilometers. NDC array MAAG-2 recorded two classic components for this type of infrasound signal: the first - formed by the motion of the ground surface in the placement of the array and the second - is formed in...
Induced seismicity is earthquake activity resulting from human activity that causes a rate of energy release, or seismicity, which would be expected beyond the normal level of background seismic activity. Although researches are still being carried out on the detailed causes of induced seismicity, there are many different applications associated with induced seismic activity. In addition to...
Scientists in Kazakhstan have worked since 1998 to preserve archives of historic seismograms of nuclear explosions, going back to 1961, recorded by stations located on territory of the USSR. During 1998-2000 the work of data collection, scanning, and digitizing, was done by CSE IPE RAS, in close cooperation with Lamont-Doherty Observatory of Columbia University, USA (LDEO). During 2005-2011...
Seismic waves can be represented as elastic perturbations propagating within a medium, originated by a transient disequilibrium in the stress field. The properties of seismic waves are ruled by the physics of elastic bodies, and are studied using the formalisms of elastodynamic theory. Solving the equation of motion helps us to reach a system of modeling including the physics of the source...
On September 30, 2012, an earthquake of magnitude Mw 7.2 occurred at the depth of ~170 km in the southeast of Colombia. This seismic event is associated to the Nazca plate subduction converging eastward relative the South America plate. The seismicity distribution recorded by the National Seismological Network of Colombia (RSNC) since 1993 shows a segmented subduction zone with varying dip...
Reviewed IDC bulletin (International Data Centre / CTBTO) shows a seismic event on 2012, June 17 near Petropavlosk (Kamtchatka, Russia). This event is composed of a series of six events occurring on a 20-minute period. ,These events associate data observed on IMS stations : infrasound on IS44, seismic on PS36, and hydroacoustic on HA11-Wake hydrophones. Our poster details analyses of this...
The RSE IGR has created a database of the digitized records (720 seismogramms) of nuclear explosions conducted at Novaya Zemlya Test Site and recorded by the USSR stations at epicentral distance from 1270 to 4410 km. The digitized seismograms allowed investigating the parameters of nuclear explosions conducted in different environment (in air, under water and underground); characteristic...
Since the beginning of its deployment, in 2009, Plostina infrasonic array (IPLOR) has proven effective in detecting acoustic signals produced by impulsive sources such as explosions, quarry blasts, volcanic eruptions, bolides, or thunderstorms. This is explained by the sensors' characteristics (frequency response, dynamic range) and the large aperture of array. Initially comprising three...
The source mechanisms of earthquake on July 2, 2013 was investigated by using moment tensor inversion. The result also compared by the field observation. Five waveform data of local seismic network used to estimate the mechanism of earthquake, namely : KCSI, MLSI, LASI, TPTI and SNSI. Mainshock data taken during 200 seconds and filtered by using Butterworth bandpass method from 0.03 to 0.05 Hz...
In 1993 Ziolkowski developed an equation for the scaling of source-time functions of explosions. This theory has been applied successfully to the three North Korean nuclear tests of 2006, 2009 and 2013, recorded at the seismic station at Mudanjiang, China. When two underground explosive devices of different size are detonated at different times but at the same location and recorded at the same...
The Institute of Geophysical Researches (IGR) of the Atomic Energy Agency of Kazakhstan Republic possesses records from Kazakhstani seismic and infrasound stations for the period from sixties of the twenty century till present. Digital and analog records from the infrasound and seismic stations and arrays were used for the study purposes. Infrasound signals from natural and industrial sources...
The aim of the xenon mitigation project is to design a mobile system for the reduction of radioxenon emissions from Radiopharmaceutical Production Facilities (RPF). The reduction of noble gas emissions from large RPF is a key issue in increasing the sensitivity of the International Noble Gas Monitoring System. In a first part of the project, the adsorption properties of different adsorbent...
Monitoring atmospheric concentration of radioxenon is relevant to provide evidence of atmospheric or underground nuclear weapon tests. However, when the International Monitoring Network (IMS) design was set up, the impact of radiopharmaceutical facilities and Nuclear power plants was not perceived at all. It is now well known that during normal operation, these facilities proceed to daily...
INVAP has experience in the design and supply of Medical Isotope Production Facilities (MIPF). Several MIPF´s have already been delivered, are currently under design, or to be commissioned in the near future. As designers of Radiation Monitoring Systems for those facilities, this experience throughout last years showed us the relevant features when measuring gaseous emissions in Isotope...
The fifth Workshop on Signatures of Medical and Industrial Isotope Production (WOSMIP) was held in Brussels in May 2015. This annual workshop focuses on the issue of radioxenon background emissions from fission-based medical isotope production and its influence on the International Monitoring System (IMS). The workshop brings together the medical isotope production and nuclear explosion...
Fission molybdenum-99 is being produced in Argentina, at the Ezeiza Atomic Centre, since 1985. The procedure involved the irradiation of HEU targets with an Uranium-Aluminum alloy "meat" cladded with aluminum. At the end of years 90 the Atomic Energy National Commission of Argentina (CNEA) started the development of new LEU targets for its Mo-99 production, in order to replace present HEU...
The International Monitoring System (IMS) radionuclide stations on the African continent have been providing data on xenon isotopes concentrations. This research aims at combining activity concentrations of xenon isotopes observed by the TXL (Temporary Xenon Laboratory) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, with activity levels observed by the IMS station in Cameroun, CMX13, and with ground based...
Medical and industrial isotopes are commonly used in science, medicine and industry, and the principal use is for medical diagnostics. One of the most used radionuclides is Technetium-99m (daughter of Molybdenum (99Mo)). The process for its production includes fission of 235U and during this process fission gases with Xenon (Xe) and Krypton (Kr) are released to the atmosphere. For many years...
The Radiation Protection Bureau (RPB) of Health Canada has operated a SPALAX noble gas sampler analyser since September 2012 at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) radionuclide station located in Resolute Bay, NU. The SPALAX has collected and measured successfully 354 samples, from which the presence of Xe-133 was detected with a range of activity concentrations ranging from no...
Radionuclide sources in the environment include nuclear explosions, normal or anomalous reactor operations, and releases from other nuclear industry, particularly medical isotope production. The most important source of artificially created radionuclides is neutron induced nuclear fission. A variety of systems and processes may introduce artificial radionuclides into the environment. Detection...
The IMS noble gas network, consisting of 40 monitoring stations, is affected by the radioxenon background mainly produced by medical isotope production facilities. Monitoring stations that are located downwind from such facilities detect radioxenon on a regular basis. These radioxenon concentrations from legitimate sources can potentially mask signals from nuclear tests. In this work it is...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) operates a worldwide network of noble gas detection systems as part of the International Monitoring System (IMS). These systems take daily atmospheric measurements of trace quantities of radioxenon, one of the most important signatures expected from a nuclear explosion, and report results to the International Data Centre (IDC) in...
To ensure compliance with the CTBT, it is crucial to have advanced monitoring technologies for the detection of nuclear testing, but also to ensure that detected signals are well understood. Traditionally, Xe-131m, Xe-133m/g, and Xe-135 originating from the fission of heavy nuclei (e.g. U-235, Pu-239) are analyzed in the context of CTBT verification. This project explores non-traditional...
RADIOXENON IN NIGERIAN RESEARCH REACTORN (NIRR-1) Abstract By: Ake Oluwatosin Aderinoye Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority Email: [email protected] Radioxenon isotopes (Radioactive xenon) are noble gases mainly produced in nuclear fission e.g., uranium-235, either via neutron-induced or spontaneous fission or via neutron activation of xenon gas and other reactions. Most radioactive...
Since September 2012, Health Canada’s Radiation Protection Bureau has been operating a SPALAX Radioxenon analyser at its Resolute Bay CTBT Aerosol monitoring station, RN15 and has collected in excess of 350 measurements of daily xenon concentrations. RN15 is one of only four radionuclide monitoring stations north of the Arctic Circle and it is not named among the first 40 RN stations...
Atmospheric concentrations of radioxenon are constantly monitored at 40 noble gas stations. Such a constant flux of data has to be categorized for better data management and also for an apprehension by non-scientists. Until today several universal categorisation schemes, e.g. based on three or five levels, to be applied to the samples from all stations have been suggested. In this work a new...
It has been shown in the past that the noble gas background resulting from civilian nuclear applications can make the discrimination between nuclear tests and civilian sources difficult. A good knowledge of this background is required to enable this discrimination. However, the radioxenon emissions from civilian sources are not always known and are quite complex. In this context, the...
The 40-station IMS radioxenon network is now nearly complete. By now, tens of thousands radioxenon samples have been collected and measured. We present an analysis of general features this data set, analyzed and compiled using software developed at the Swedish NDC. The results can be used in many applications, including assessment of the capability of the IMS network, development of...
Seafloor cabled seismic and tsunami observation systems have been deployed around the Japan islands arc to monitor seismic activities and detect tsunamis offshore. Because the number of cabled observation system on the seafloor is limited, the number of observational stations of cabled system should increase. Therefore we have developed a new compact seafloor cabled observation system with low...
This research started with writing the specifications that were discussed in the early Working Group B meetings back in the late nineties, coupled with a number of lessons learned in the subsequent decade and a half from the installation of a number of these arrays. Also included were a number of upgrades to the existing arrays, and more recently, improvements in the hardware (for example:...
For the last few decades, many destructive earthquakes and tsunamis occurred in the world. Based on lessons learnt from 2004 Sumatra Earthquake/Tsunamis, 2010 Chilean Earthquake/Tsunami and 2011 East Japan Earthquake/Tsunami, we recognized the importance of real time monitoring on Earthquakes and Tsunamis. There are some kinds of real time monitoring system such as Dart buoy and ocean floor...
The radioxenon system SAUNA II is now installed at 17 locations in the International Monitoring System. A new development project has been launched at FOI, SAUNA III, with the goal to result in a major improvement of performance and capability of the current SAUNA II system, including increased air sampling capacity, time resolution, detection sensitivity and stability, and user friendliness....
Recent work has demonstrated on-board barometers and microphones in the present generation of smartphones are infrasound-capable, and provide an existing, dense ubiquitous global sensor network that can supplement the IMS. Extreme natural events in sensitive regions can trigger false alarms in treaty verification systems. The 0.5 Mt Chelyabinsk explosion was well recorded by IMS IS31 in...
The detection of anomalous concentration of noble‐gas (NG) radionuclides in the subsurface gases during an on‐site inspection (OSI) is a strong indicator of a suspicious underground nuclear explosion. This implies that the sampling methodology ensure the collection of a reliable representative subsurface gaseous sample, avoiding the mixing with atmospheric gases. Sampling NG in shallow layers...
High quality data from regional and local seismological networks can increase the effectiveness of State Party monitoring and analysis under the CTBT. Currently, many networks still operate older electromechanical seismometers with digitizers which, unfortunately, are poorly calibrated. Calibration of these stations is difficult because of impedance mismatches, coil loading, and amplifier gain...
Seismic signal detectors are extremely important, not only because an earthquake or a seismic event of interest must be detected automatically in real time to launch an early alarm, but also to optimize the necessary storage memory. Furthermore, it is always indispensable to identify seismic signals from noise so that they can be analyzed. Therefore, an automatic identification algorithm that...
CANBERRA’s Small Anode Germanium (SAGe) Well detector is a new type of low capacitance germanium well detector manufactured using small anode technology. The detector has energy resolution performance similar to semi-planar detectors, and offers significant improvement over the existing Coaxial and Well detectors. Mathematical efficiency calibration using ISOCS/LabSOCS framework offers great...
The HPGe detector represents one of the fundamental instruments in noble gas measurements. Operating these systems requires an accurate knowledge of detection efficiency, which varies strongly with the source–detector distance. This means that we need a recalibration of detector efficiency for each sample–detector configuration. Big volume sources like Marinelli geometries can provide the best...
Development of JISView, the earthquake monitoring system has been done in Research and Development Center of Indonesia Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) to support operations on earthquake monitoring and analysis. Stages of the research study initiated in software development, AMZTAK to determine of earthquake focal mechanisms. System development include the...
Most radioxenon detector systems employed by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization are stationary by design, with heavy lead shields and delicate components that do not match the requirements of on-site inspections. We present in this paper a novel detector designed for field measurements, based on a simple phoswich geometry where beta and gamma scintillators are read out by a...
The technical research and development of the most advanced equipment in support of the CTBT verification regime is to a large extent multilateral international affairs in coordination with CTBTO and involving institutions and technical experts from all over the world. One of the organisations significantly supporting CTBTO since many years and in a variety of technical fields is the European...
The re-establishment of hydrophone monitoring station HA04 Crozet Islands, Southern Indian Ocean French Southern and Antarctic Territories, is underway. The dynamic environment at Crozet is governed at the surface by winds and sea states which can be higher than in many other locations. Below the surface, the Crozet plateau is affected by local circulation emanating from the sub-Antarctic...
We will discuss and show the results obtained from an integrated SeismoGeodetic System, model SG160-09, installed in the Chilean National Network. The SG160-09 provides high rate GNSS and accelerometer data, and create combined GNSS and accelerometer high-rate (200Hz) displacement time series in real-time. The SG160-09 receiver incorporates on-board GNSS point positioning using Real-Time...
The objective of the poster is to present the efforts made by the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) over the last 3 years to assess and improve the quality of the meteorological data recorded at International Monitoring System (IMS) infrasound stations. This includes the processing and assessment of the data recorded since 2000, the organization of Expert Group Meetings, comparison of...
IRIS has deployed thousands of seismic stations as part of the EarthScope USArray and other efforts. In particular, the Transportable Array (TA) has completed its ten-year, 1,700 station rolling deployment across the continental United States. The TA network has delivered high quality data and network uptimes exceeding 98%. Motivated by the success of the TA and other IRIS programs, and to...
Detection of four radioxenon isotopes (131mXe, 133mXe, 133Xe and 135Xe) is typically based on beta–gamma coincidence spectroscopy system. In the most of detection systems, plastic scintillator is used as container of radioxenon isotopes and beta particles detector. Because of unusual geometry of beta detector, optical photons undergo attenuation and scattering. These effects can change the...
The International Monitoring System (IMS) consists of 80 radionuclide stations all of which can detect particulate radioactivity, and 40 of which can also detect noble gas xenon. As key equipments for radionuclide monitoring, the reliability of the samplers, have a direct impact on the minimum detectable concentration and the data availability of IMS radionuclide stations. As continuous...
In late 2011, an agreement was made between the Department of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) to invest in the recapitalization of the aging infrastructure of the Yellowknife Seismic Array (YKA) in Yellowknife, Northwest Territory, Canada. Originally constructed in 1962, YKA is...
The tectonic convergence process, which takes place in the north-west part of South America, due to Nazca, Cocos, South American and Caribbean Plates interaction has been aim of study with different methods; however, most of them have been applied one after another, but not simultaneously, resulting on an extended in time set of data, but, which includes contributions from different methods...
The Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica, National University (OVSICORI-UNA) is a University Research Institute dedicated to research of volcanoes, earthquakes and other tectonic processes.Network monitoring seismic and volcanic OVSICORI-UNA The seismic and volcanic network consists of instruments period short Ranger (SS-1), broadband (BA) Type: Güralp (CMG-6TD),...
In order to detect radioxenon isotopes, a homemade geometry detection system based on beta-gamma coincidence has been developed. The system consists of a well-type NaI(Tl) detector that surround plastic scintillator in the solid angle near the 4π. The well-type NaI(Tl) detector measure gamma or X-ray and plastic scintillator detect electron particles. The beta detector was calibrated using...
Transducers implemented in microbarometer are mainly composed of two associated elements. The first one converts the external pressure variation into a physical linear displacement. The second one converts this motion into an electrical signal. According to this configuration, MB3, MB2000 and MB2005 microbarometers are using an aneroid capsule for the first one, and an electromagnetic...
The On-Site Inspections (OSI) constitute the final verification measure under the CTBT and the Treaty lists all permitted activities and techniques. One of these is the environmental sampling of noble gases (NG), which can be deployed at any time during an OSI. For the CTBT relevant radioactive noble gas isotopes are Xe-133, 133m, 131m, 135 and Ar-37, specialized equipment is developed for...
Three of four radio-xenon monitoring systems have been developed based on beta-gamma coincidence system. Most important step in operation of Xe detection system is calibration by standards. An efficient method to accomplish this step is established using β-γ spectrum of 137Cs . In that case the source position and detector geometrical design might effect the results.A β-γ coincidence...
The objective of this poster is to present the background, scope, objective and technical protocol of a Pilot Inter-laboratory Comparison Study organized between three research laboratories to refine sensor specifications and testing methodologies for the infrasound technology. In the initiation phase of the Pilot Study, participating laboratories and the PTS came to a consensus on working...
The Pinedale Seismic Research Facility (PSRF) is establishing an infrasound sensor calibration system and field test bed. The goal is to provide the infrasonic research community with a neutral platform to compare, test, and optimize infrasonic recording systems. The PSRF is in a unique location to record signals from a variety of man made sources. There are also areas of high topographic...
Water column hydrophone stations of the CTBT International Monitoring System (IMS) are typically comprised of two triplets of moored hydrophones deployed on opposite sides of an island. Once deployed, the systems relay underwater acoustic waveforms in the band 1 – 100 Hz in real time to CTBTO via a shore based satellite link. The re-establishment of hydrophone station HA03 at Robinson Crusoe...
The design requirements for the SAUNA III radio-xenon measurement system pose several challenges for beta-gamma detector development. SAUNA III shall use nitrogen as carrier gas rather than helium as in the current SAUNA. It shall be capable of collecting 4 atmospheric air samples per 24 hours and achieve a sample minimum detectable concentration (MDC) of better than 0.3 mBq/m3 and for 135Xe...
Today, more than 25 SAUNA Systems are installed around the world, operated by national and international organisations. The activity measurement of the four xenon isotopes, 133Xe, 131mXe, 133mXe, and 135Xe is performed using the very sensitive beta gamma coincidence technique allowing high sensitivity also for the meta-stable states resulting in MDC:s of 0.3, 0.3, 0.3 and 0.7 mBq/m3...
The objective of this poster is to present the status and latest achievements on the calibration of the IMS Seismic, Infrasound and Hydroacoustic stations. This includes PTS progress on scheduled calibration of IMS Seismic stations, the development and testing of a new calibration technique for Infrasound stations using a reference sensor and ambient noise, and related software developments....
In collaboration with Hyperion Technology Group, Inc, the National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA) has developed a digital infrasound sensor that can be configured for broadband outdoor measurements (flat within 3-dB from 0.03-150 Hz) and a nominal maximum transducible pressure of 200-Pa peak-to-peak, ultra-broadband measurements for calibration systems (flat within 3-dB from 0.0003-Hz to...
The current SAUNA II system, installed worldwide in the IMS network, detects radioactive xenon isotopes in an atmospheric air sample. Ambient air is continuously collected, xenon is extracted and measured in sensitive - detectors in an automated process. Current development on the new SAUNA III system is aimed at improving the time-resolution for the system a factor of two, from 12 to 6...
The S-net Project is currently in progress in Japan to construct a large-scale seafloor monitoring network of earthquakes and tsunamis along the Japan Trench. NIED takes in charge of the project which is supported by MEXT financially. A disaster prevention is a major purpose of the network by providing earthquake and tsunami data on the seafloor in real-time. Such real-time data make it...
We have implemented volcanic-surveillance systems based on thermal imaging at El Reventador and Tungurahua volcanoes (Ecuador), which provide the capability to compare visible-range images with the correspondent apparent-temperature images at near real-time. The installed equipment consists on a netcam that shows real-time images, and a thermal camera, which provides images on demand. The...
The latest development of the SAUNA laboratory system for noble gas samples at FOI will be presented. The system is used for a variety purposes ranging from routine reanalysis of samples from the IMS station SEX63, verification of samples during noble gas system development (such as the OSI SAUNA), processing and analysation of subsoil samples. To improve the quality control and to simplify...
The objective of this poster is to present the efforts made by the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) over the last four years to assess and improve the robustness and efficiency of Wind Noise Reduction Systems (WNRS) used within the IMS (International Monitoring System) infrasound network. This work includes modelling of the frequency response of the different types of WNRS. It also...
Large, agile constellations of small Earth-imaging satellites are an emerging trend in the commercial earth observation industry. This trend has important potential for supporting nuclear test monitoring efforts due to the ability to rapidly and affordably collect imagery or HD video of a suspected nuclear test site. The capability could be useful both before and after an explosive event, due...
Aerial radiation surveys provide a method for surveying a potential inspection area for the presence of radioactive material from a possible nuclear test. Large areas can be covered relatively quickly with reasonable sensitivity. Understanding of the sensitivity through the evaluation of minimum detectable activities in the presence of real backgrounds and under operational conditions would be...
This paper presents the configurations and performances of novel CANBERRA detection and identification solutions of radioactive nuclides. Based on new HPGe spectrometer designs notably using a proprietary encapsulation technique and autonomous electrical coolers, these systems address outdoor monitoring and mobile surveying with performances similar to lab conditions. Precise dosimetry and...
We are developing and testing a spectrum-blind system for the acquisition and analysis of high-resolution gamma ray spectra during on-site inspections under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The On-Site Inspection RadioIsotopic Spectroscopy— OSIRIS—system includes software filters that limit the display of spectral data to radioisotopic information relevant to CTBT on-site...
Multispectral and infrared imaging technologies are used in a CTBT on-site inspection (OSI) to search for anomalies and artifacts. During an OSI, spectral imagers can be used from the ground, as well as from the air during an additional overflight. For the airborne acquisition of spectrally resolved images, one common approach used throughout the remote sensing community is a pushbroom...
Due to the rapid development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in recent years they have become a tool that could be applied during an On-Site Inspection (OSI). This talk will give an overview of the types of UAVs currently available and comment on how they could be used during an OSI. The talk will focus on how small to mid-sized UAVs could be used to take conventional and Multi-spectral and...
A high-resolution gamma-gamma coincidence system has been developed at GBL15 for fast quantification of both cascade and single gamma emissions from CTBT relevant radionuclides. This consists of two BEGe-6530 crystals and an active cosmic veto. CAEN digitisers collect all data in list-mode, allowing offline sorting and processing with ROOT based analysis routines. Energy and time gated...
Atmospheric radioxenon detection, specifically the measurements of low concentrations of Xe-131m, Xe-133m, Xe-133, and Xe-135, has proven to be an important method for monitoring nuclear weapons testing. To improve the reliability and maintainability of current radioxenon detection systems employed in the International Monitoring System (IMS), a two-element coplanar CZT detector has been...
The measurement of gamma emitting airborne particulates collected on filters is a vital monitoring activity for both CTBTO and national radiological early warning networks. In the event of a radiological incident the measurements made by these networks must be rapidly collected, analysed and assessed. The results are then forwarded to national governments where decisions with far reaching...
A system for the simultaneous and continuous gamma spectrometry measurement of particulate airborne radioactivity that combines a high purity Germanium detector with scintillation detectors is presented. Performance of this system is being evaluated in the framework of a project funded by the EURAMET programme. The main goal of this activity is the improvement of the capabilities of the...
In the framework of the verification of the CTBT the localization of possible underground nuclear explosion sites is important. In order to localize these sites sensitive seismic measurements of so-called aftershocks can be performed, which, however, can be disturbed by different signals. We focus on disturbances caused by airborne sources: When sound of aircraft hits the ground it excites...
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) monitoring technologies such as infrasound and seismic waves are capable of detecting aggressive events, including earthquakes, chemical and nuclear explosions. Further analysis is required in order to characterize the nature of each event and its relevance to the treaty. Here we propose a rapid and automated method for discriminating nuclear...
Accurate detection of radioxenon sources is an important aspect of the International Monitoring System (IMS). Lowering the minimum detectable concentrations (MDCs) and increasing the power to discriminate between anthropogenic sources and nuclear explosions can each aid in the identification of radioxenon events. Current radioxenon detectors use beta-gamma coincidence detection to limit...
Gas chromatograph (GC) with thermal conductivity detector (TCD) is indispensible for the OSI radioxenon processing system to be used to analyze the concentration of stable xenon to calculate recovery. The functionality of GC is not only to analyze the concentration of stable xenon but also to resolve other technical problems in the radioxenon system，including concentrating of xenon，and removal...
Cosmic Muon Veto Systems (CMVS) are used for suppression of the signals produced by HPGe detectors as effect of the interaction of cosmic radiation with the lead shielding of the detector. A customized CMVS has been installed at the VIP00 test station of CTBTO Headquarter in Vienna, with the scope to assess the impact of electromagnetic particles showers produced by the interaction of cosmic...
Underground nuclear explosions can have detectable impacts on hydrogeological conditions; potentially affecting aquifers and wells as well as soil moisture. A potential impact of a detonation is cool subsurface or geothermal water being brought to the surface or to the near-surface, manifesting as OSI-relevant thermal anomalies. The use of infrared imaging equipment at the surface and from the...
The CTBTO has used airborne remote sensing suites to collect MSIR data relevant to an OSI during several exercises and field tests: notably a suite was deployed during IFE14. These systems have been used for proof-of-concept tests and to develop operating principles and therefore are not optimized for use in an actual OSI. For example, the system used in IFE14 was technically very capable but...
The CTBTO verification system comprises On-Site Inspection (OSI) to verify the suspicion of a banned nuclear test. One of the methods of verification is the radiological survey of the inspection area. The measurement car DeGeN of our institute, which is equipped with highly sensitive neutron and gamma detectors, is well suitable for car borne survey. The quality of the results of such a survey...
In the framework of the CTBT verification regime , recent developments related to IMS station detection systems involving semi-conductor detectors for both electron (silicon) and photon (germanium) high resolution measurements will lead to a major breakthrough in fission product traces analysis in the atmosphere. Coupled to an efficient xenon air extraction and concentration process, high...
As a consequence of the Fukushima accident it became obvious that the IMS filter could potentially cause radiological concern for the station operators due to the high air flow rate which can lead to accumulation of sizeable activities on the filters. Also, the data from the filter analysis is not available until more than 52 hours from the collection start (the time of the first preliminary...
IMS support laboratories are in charge of the expertise of both particulates and noble gases samples collected by the CTBT radioactivity monitoring network. Due to radioactive decay and transportation delays, the highest detection sensitivities for CTBT relevant isotopes must be achieved by laboratories. FRL08 laboratory has designed and built a new low-level gamma/electron spectrometry setup....
IMS noble gas stations require to purify and to concentrate Xe by using compact and cost-effective processes. Noble gas separation is also of crucial importance regarding the xenon mitigation to prevent strong releases from nuclear facilities. CEA has been working for a few years on the development of a new adsorbent material to purify and concentrate Xe: silver exchanged zeolite (MFI),...
Within the BlackSeaHazNet Project (FP7 MCA PIRSES-GA-2009-246874), the pilot research of allocation of radon and gamma radionuclide was realized in three karsts caves in Slovenia (Postojna Cave System, Županova Jama and Škocjan Caves) and at one cave in Northern Italy (Grotta Gigante). In all four caves, radon and gamma ray monitoring was performed to understand the relation between radon and...
Whilst the value of airborne technologies to an On-Site Inspection (OSI) was highlighted during the 2014 Integrated Field Exercise, further synergies are possible between all airborne systems that could decrease instrument footprint, ease equipment installation and reduce training needs. These benefits are driven by the overarching need to facilitate the work of inspectors during an OSI when...
The newly developed SiPIN beta-gamma coincidence measurement system for Noble Gas monitoring systems produced by Lares Ltd. has been procured and tested by the PTS for OSI purposes. To assess its usability and sensitivity in the IMS Noble Gas network context the SiPIN detector was connected in parallel to the HPGe system at the test Noble Gas SPALAX system at VIC. The poster presents the...
An essential component of an on-site inspection is a gamma radiation survey, which is preferably carried out on an aerial platform. An aerial radiometric survey is capable of mapping dose rate or isotope-specific concentrations with high density over a large area in a relatively short time (eg. 8 km^2 in 2.5 hrs with typical flight parameters). The contoured concentration distribution provides...
Remote sensing imagery is a powerful tool for the international organizations, states and interested individuals to monitor compliance of states parties with nuclear security related treaties. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that has not yet entered into force, recognizes the use of remote sensing technology for the CTBT verification as part of the National Technical Means and...
Preparation methods for traceable xenon standards and the results of the 2014 Xenon laboratory intercomparison exercise are presented. One element of the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) program for Noble Gas systems of the IMS Radionuclide network will be based on sample re-analyses at IMS laboratories. In order to ensure the credibility of IMS laboratories as providers of reference...
The Link to the database of the International Seismological Centre (ISC) provides both PTS and National Data Centres with dedicated access to seismological datasets maintained by ISC using specially designed graphical interfaces and database queries. This service gives access to several products: the ISC/ISS bulletins of natural seismicity of the Earth, mining induced events as well as nuclear...
CTBTO provides technical assistance that enables Member States to work with monitoring data and IDC products. This assistance includes the distribution and installation of software package, so called NDC-in-a-box (NIAB) which gives the NDCs the capability to receive, work with and analyze seismic hydroacoustic and infrasound data. In 2013, in the framework of European Joint Action V under NDC...
We associate an array processing method to detect seismic events and a machine learning classification method to classify the detections. The detector is the progressive multi-channel correlation (PMCC) technique, which has been developed at the Environmental Assessment and Monitoring Department (DASE) of CEA. It is designed to detect any coherent wavefront crossing a seismometer array, and to...
Seismic phase arrival time identification is a fundamental and vital task in seismic signal processing as it enables seismologists to derive important geological and seismological information. This includes location of earthquakes and other seismic sources such as nuclear explosions and quarry blasts. Additionally, seismic phase properties have served in many other studies, including source...
The Institute of Geospheres Dynamics runs small aperture seismic array Mikhnevo (MHVAR) since 2004. We use the advantage of location and historical bulletins/catalogues of mining explosions recorded by Mikhnevo and data from seismic array AKASG (primary station of the International Monitoring System) in order to improve detection and identification of mining activity within the Russian...
The sensitivity of correlation detectors increases greatly when the outputs from multiple seismic traces are considered. For single-array monitoring, a zero-offset stack of individual correlation traces will provide significant noise suppression and enhanced sensitivity for a region surrounding the master event hypocenter. This region’s extent is limited only by the decrease in waveform...
We present SIG-VISA (SIGnal-based Vertically Integrated Seismic Analysis), a next-generation approach to Bayesian seismic monitoring. This work builds upon the success of NET-VISA, recently recommended for production deployment at the IDC. While NET-VISA focuses on network processing, SIG-VISA subsumes station and network processing using a probabilistic model of continuous seismic waveforms....
Seismic monitoring activities, either for CTBT or earthquake-induced disaster control, are facing a new era of big data as the number of seismic stations, has increased rapidly and significantly. However, the reality that up to date routine seismic data processing is still heavily relied on manual interactive analyses can hardly fit situations of the new era.Aim to develop technologies for...
Previous work on NET-VISA (Network Processing Vertically Integrated Seismic Analysis) has shown that a Bayesian approach to global seismic monitoring can be very effective. Such an approach builds on probabilistic generative models of seismicity, signal propagation, noise, and detector performance. Crucial to NET-VISA's performance are empirically calibrated measures of the uncertainty...
Seismography is the science of exploring the earth through recorded data of traveling inside the earth from the source to the receiver. Seismologists are usually working with a huge amount of data and they are always encountering with the data format problem. Many companies and groups define their specific data format and while scientists are working on their projects they usually have the...
ANGLE software for quantitative gamma-spectrometry is routinely exploited in hundreds gamma spectrometry based laboratories worldwide www.angle.dlabac.com. Its applicability in CTBTO test-ban-related radionuclide monitoring was demonstrated earlier (SnT2013). ANGLE allows for accurate determination of the activities of gamma spectroscopic samples for which no "replicate" standard exists, in...
Empirically-derived waveform correlators often are exquisitely sensitive detectors and robust event classifiers when applied to search for highly-repetitive events. Their usefulness is limited, however, by the absence of training events in many regions. An ability to extend waveform correlation techniques to aseismic regions would be highly desirable and motivates a search for model-based...
One of significant current tasks in seismology is the improvement of the automated processing of seismic records on a time scale as close to reality. The use of wavelet transform allows to simultaneously run any necessary filtering and easily detect a different phase of the input signal that are not visible on the original seismograms, especially in case of strong noise. The entire process of...
The IDC receives and processes data from the global network of the IMS for seismic, hydroacoustic and infrasound sources. The analysis involves a multistage automatic processing at station and network levels, followed by an interactive review of the results performed by waveform analysts. The study summarizes the results of the project "Framework for detection software evaluation" that was...
The IMS infrasound arrays have up to 15 sites with apertures up to 3 km. They are distributed remarkably uniformly over the globe, providing excellent coverage of South America, Africa, and Antarctica. Therefore, many infrasound arrays are in regions thousands of kilometers from the closest seismic array. Existing 3-component seismic stations, co-located with infrasound arrays, show how...
UANDC performs processing of seismic and infrasound data 24/7. UANDC uses data from IMS station, IRIS and GEOFON servers and data from national system of observation. Data processing of seismic data performs in real-time and in three steps. The first one is automatic analysis. The 3-pipeline SeisComp3 system for different regions of interest and own software are used. Automatic processing used...
DataScale is a French Software Project born at the call number 3 «Cloud Computing» and «Big Data» of French "Investissements d’avenir". The goal of the project is to develop a data analysis tool leading to revise the seismicity at global scale between 2002 to 2012. Seismic waveform data are obtained from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) using primary seismic...
In order to support scientifically credible investigations during OSI, enhanced capabilities of custom GIS solution for the OSI application has been developed. The principal purpose of the enhancements was to establish an easy-to-use enhanced human-machine interface prototype GIS suitable for data and maps management related to OSI workflows during operations. CTBTO used professional GIS...
Expert Technical Analysis (ETA) at the International Data Center (IDC) is a complex and not well defined area of the information analysis. It involves different and not always directly interconnected instances, such as data, products, methods, software, etc. Setting up the ETA at the IDC should initiate the work related to these instances in parallel, to have it working as a tested and...
CTBTO provides technical assistance that enables Member States to work with monitoring data and IDC products. This assistance includes the distribution and installation of NDC software package. This NDC-in-a-box consists of software to receive, work with and analyze the data. CTBTO is extending the current NDC-in-a-box with additional software enabling users to easily combine data from...
Tools for fusion of atmospheric transport models with data are of a great importance in many fields where characteristics of a source term are sought. Theoretically, as the most promising seem to be tools based on Bayesian analysis. Their most appealing feature is the inherent capability to treat the full probability distributions of involved uncertainties. Since the output is a posterior...
The first atmospheric event built exclusively from infrasound arrivals was reported in the Reviewed Event Bulletin in 2003. Currently 48 infrasound stations from the IMS are installed and transmitting data to the IDC. The infrasound component of the IMS daily registers infragenic signals originating from various natural sources such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, meteorites entering the...
The Distributed Application Control System (DACS) is the backbone of the automatic processing of seismic, hydro-acoustic and infrasound (SHI) waveform data at the IDC. It drives the execution of processing applications by organizing data into time intervals, processing steps into pipelines, and using message queues for task scheduling. Because licensed software hampers free distribution and...
Since 2001, the Center for Acquisition and Processing of Special Seismic Information of RSE IGR (KNDC) in Kazakhstan applies the NORSAR array processing software together with own developed software tools. More than 10 years of on-line data processing by using this technology has shown its reliability and effectiveness for automated detecting and processing of seismic events from different...
The IDC automatic seismic event bulletin is generated by performing two sequential processing steps: first station processing to find detections, and then network processing to form events. This processing paradigm differs significantly from that applied by human analysts. Analysts bring to bear considerable human intuition acquired during the processing of past events and use that to...
In September 2014 all 25 sites of the ARCES seismic array in Norway were upgraded to 3-component stations, making it the first fully 3-C IMS array. S-phases are of paramount importance for detecting and locating seismic events at regional distances and it is important that these phases are both detected and attributed accurate slowness estimates. The estimated apparent velocity and backazimuth...
Seismological signal detection is the process of identifying those parts of a recorded waveform that may contain information about seismic events of interest. Detected signals can be associated to define, locate, and characterise these events. Recent work has demonstrated that advanced signal detection algorithms such as the generalised F detector (Selby; 2008,2011,2013), when compared with...
The bulletin data form Egypt and Saudi Arabia Seismic Networks are used for the period January 2003 through June 2004 to relocate over 100 earthquakes occurring in and around the Gulf of Aqaba. The earthquakes have picks in the bulletin for stations surrounding the Gulf (Egypt and Saudi Arabia). Joint hypocenter determination method used to estimate the seismic station corrections and...
In our previous research, Melcepstral coefficients were extracted from a number of infrasonic hand-digitized atmospheric explosion waveforms from the 1962 Operation Dominic series of atmospheric nuclear tests. These explosions were shown to have a distinctive pattern of melcepstral coefficients which can be modeled with synthetically-generated waveforms. In this follow-on research, the authors...
NET-VISA is an open universe generative model for seismic event location which is currently being evaluated for use at the International Data Centre (IDC) of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Underlying the model is a set of probability distributions which are learned from IDC bulletins, primarily the LEB and SEL3. NET-VISA explicitly models many parameters which have...
The Vienna Basin in Eastern Austria is a region of low to moderate seismicity, and hence the seismological network coverage is relatively sparse. Nevertheless, the area is one of the most densely populated areas in Austria. The Vienna Basin fault system (VBFS), which branches beneath the Basin, occasionally shows earthquakes with magnitudes larger than 4. Accurate earthquake location,...
Different physical phenomena underlying the pillars of CTBT monitoring and verification result in a different culture of accessing CTBTO data, vocabulary employed while analysing it and, most importantly, different products built with this data. However, an idea of associating information from these different pillars, namely waveform and radionuclide technologies, has been on CTBTO’s agenda...
Automatic identification of the noisy seismic events is still a problem. The process involves analyzing complex relationships between huge amounts of data originating from different sources. The main disturbing factors with seismic data are: • Poor signal-to-noise ratio; • The presence of accidental bursts of man-made noise; • Changes in the phase and amplitude of the signals while traveling...
The accuracy of the determination of the parameters and earthquake source mechanism has supported by made the development of polarity identification techniques and the quality of the first impulse of the P wave and digital signal processing in earthquake monitoring system JISView. Implementation includes the study of defining and testing methods and procedures appropriate in earthquake...
Since 2012, Geoscience Australia is operating a full 3-component seismic array with an aperture of ~ 20 km in Northwest Australia. This presentation uses data obtained from this array to investigate the usefulness of having a full 3-component array versus one with vertical components only. First, a comparison is made between two coherency based detection algorithms for 3-component data. One is...
The exploitation of similar waveform signals from historic seismic events to detect, locate, and study new events is widely accepted as a key capability for modern nuclear explosion monitoring systems. The basic underlying calculation – time series cross correlation – is simple to implement and the ever-increasing online archives of signals suggests that the technique will become increasingly...
In CTBT related applications Blind Source Separation (BSS) methods can be used for signal recovery from the mixture using minimal a priori information about the signals composing the mixture. Expert Technical Analysis (ETA) conducted in CTBTO to improve the estimated values for the standard signal and event parameters according to the Protocol to the CTBT may face problems which cannot be...
The United States National Data Center (US NDC) monitors international compliance to nuclear test ban treaties through the real time acquisition, processing, and evaluation of seismic, hydroacoustic, and infrasonic data. The US NDC geophysical data processing system uses this data to automatically build seismic events which are reviewed and refined by a collection of human analysts. Manual...
An array consisting of seven 3-C sensors was tested for the purposes of regional seismotectonic monitoring. The aperture of several hundred meters is suitable for detection and identification of regional phases. This portable array was installed within the Russian platform which is an aseismic zone where regional sources with magnitudes 1.0 to 3.5 are chiefly associated with mining. We use...
Commissioning of the seismic array PS44 is associated with the beginning the new era of seismology in Turkmenistan, the era of digital data. The Institute created the program Sw-View for processing seismic data. It is designed for detailed processing and visual analysis of digital seismic signals coming from various data collection systems. Digital recording files in main seismic formats are...
The number of seismic networks and stations in the Arabian Peninsula/Middle East is rapidly increasing. Even so, due to heterogeneous geometries, the network coverage is insufficient to fully describe the wide range of seismicity (e.g., mining and small aftershocks). Although seismic networks primarily employ incoherent detectors, Junek et al. (2014) demonstrated a reduction in magnitude...
Discrimination between earthquakes and explosions is an important component of the CTBT verification regime. Currently used seismic discrimination methods give a partial solution to the problem. In this work, we apply advanced machine learning methods and in particular diffusion maps for automatic earthquake-explosion discrimination. Diffusion maps is a nonlinear kernel method, which learns...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty’s verification regime requires uniform distribution of monitoring capabilities over the globe. The use of waveform cross correlation as a monitoring technique demands waveform templates from master events outside regions of natural seismicity and test sites. We populated aseismic areas with masters having synthetic templates for predefined sets (from 3...
The seismic, hydroacoustic and infrasonic processing system installed at the International Data Centre (IDC) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) continually processes waveform data from the global International Monitoring System (IMS) network. In order to better address data quality issues, a dedicated waveform quality control application has been developed. This...
‘Improvements’ in automatic waveform processing that would reduce analyst workload are distinguished from those that would increase it. Analysts are the most numerous specialists in CTBTO, and their tasks the most costly. So reducing their number is an important long-term goal. Nevertheless, the average time taken to analyse one hour of events (first pass analysis) has increased from 1.5 hours...
The statistics of signals associated to events in the IDC’s final automatic event list (SEL3) and after analyst review (LEB) reveal features and trends that may assist in prioritizing work to improve both. Since 2005 the number of manually detected signals at primary seismic arrays has increased substantially. Major differences are revealed in the performance of automatic signal association...
Waveform correlation used as a signal detector not only produces much higher quality signal detections (including reliable phase identifications) than traditional methods (e.g., STA/LTA), but also provides immediate information about corresponding events including estimates of location, magnitude, and source type. As a result, both the quality of the automatically built events and of the...
The new location algorithm developed for the International Seismological Centre (ISC) has been operational since January 2011. By providing improved hypocentre and magnitude estimates, the ISC locator has increased the efficiency and productivity of the ISC review process to generate the reviewed ISC bulletin. A new development branch has spun off the ISC locator in 2014, the iLoc locator....
Various types of vibration sources are always producing the so-called Ambient Vibrations on the Earth ground (also called ambient noise). Each vibration source is divided into high or low noise model as a function of frequency. The main goal of this study was to recognize two new applications of ambient noise as a verification tool of nuclear explosions. These applications are: A) Identifying...
Due to the location of the IFE14 inspection area in Jordan on the Dead Sea Rift, an abundance of natural seismic events and quarry explosions had to be ruled out as possible aftershocks from an underground nuclear explosion for the OSI seismic aftershock monitoring system (SAMS). The extreme topography and restrictions led to a reduced number in deployed mini-arrays. Nevertheless SAMS...
While the logistic aspects of an OSI have already been tested several times in realistic exercises, the technical questions are quite new and a strong scientific base is still pending. Furthermore, only very few experiments have been conducted using the seismic techniques listed by the Treaty to detect evidence of a cavity caused by an underground nuclear explosion. This motivates to...
A set of seismometers were deployed around the site of known underground nuclear explosions (UNE) at the U.S. Nevada National Security Site. The purpose was twofold: to test the use of seismic interferometry to image UNE sites and to evaluate effects that might be caused by resonances in the damaged subsurface ("e.g. "resonance seismometry"). We also generated 3D synthetics using a finite...
FSUE "VNIIA" is the leading organization of the State Atomic Energy Corporation "Rosatom" regarding the aspects of the implementation of the CTBT. It currently carries out activities in the following directions: -Repair and modernization of technical equipment at International Monitoring System (IMS) stations located on the territory of the Russian Federation; -Scientific and methodological...
Trimble has developed a self-contained, fully integrated Aftershock System, model 160-03, providing simple and quick deployment during aftershock mobilization, site characterization and microzonation studies. The 160-03 has no external cables or peripheral equipment for command/control and operation in the field. It contains three major components integrated in one case: a) 24-bit state-of-the...
The paper studies the structure of upper part of the section at the location of explosive nuclear boreholes at Semipalatinsk Test Site area. The data of first arrivals of the refracted waves’ method at eight parallel profiles, 6 km long each, and at 500 m interval between them, was used. Based on the time of first arrivals using ray tracing method, velocity structure of the section has been...
The development of radioxenon monitoring technology and methodology should be guided by systematic and detailed study of the overall capability of the network for alternative system characteristics, network configuration and analysis methodology. For this purpose, suitable metrics are needed to evaluate and optimize relevant properties of the overall network verification capability. Because...
The International Monitoring System (IMS) is designed to ensure compliance with the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by detecting, locating and characterizing explosions worldwide. Simulation methods incorporating realistic source and propagation effects have been developed to quantify the detection capability of this network and also to optimize the network configuration. Even not...
The Himalaya and its surrounding regions are highly complex in terms of its evolution, tectonics and seismicity. Indo-Nepal Himalaya displays all major tectonic features of the Himalayan mobile belt and is seismically one of the active regions in the Himalayan arc. Observations indicate that there is a significant fluctuation in seismicity at different times but mostly prior to large...
The Brazilian Amazon is located within the stable interior of South American plate, region characterized by low magnitude seismicity with only few earthquakes of magnitudes above 5. However, with an expressive number of magnitude 3 – 4, but detected by sparse network and, consequently being poorly studied. Recently this scenario has changed with the implementation of the Brazilian...
Station detection capability is important in infrasound technology, especially for International Monitoring System. Knowing detection capability helps in recognizing nuclear explosion signal. The purpose of this work is to check if effect of local weather condition varies according the station configuration or station location. Study was done for single station I3MG and is extended to other...
The IMS noble gas network has been designed with 40 monitoring stations to equally monitor the Earth’s atmosphere for releases of radioxenon from nuclear explosions. The first step in this work is to assess the coverage of the current network design with regard to underground, atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests and to the radioxenon background produced by nuclear power plants and medical...
The Seismological Network of Namibia consists of 7 operational broadband and single-phase seismic stations located across Namibia. It is a capital project funded wholly by the Government of the Republic of Namibia. Initiated by the Geophysics Division of the Geological Survey of Namibia to better understand the geo-environment, it is also used to develop a national archive, monthly event...
Among the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident is that procedures should be developed for handling and shipping of Level 5 samples which exceed exempt quantities for safe transport from a station to a certified laboratory. In parallel, laboratories which have the capability to receive and measure these non-exempt samples should be identified, in case they are needed. An exercise...
This poster presents the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) of the IMS radionuclide station network for the years 2013 and 2014. In this time period, 63 certified radionuclide particulate stations and 19 certified noble gas systems were sending data to the IDC. The Performance Reporting Tool of the PTS, the daily state-of-health monitoring of the stations and incident tracking through the...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test–Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is a non-discriminatory legal and democratic body with the responsibility to verify the compliance to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test–Ban Treaty (CTBT). To fulfill this task, the Treaty enjoins the CTBTO to offer technical assistance to States Signatories to fulfill their verification responsibilities under the Treaty, since final...
A science team of CTBT and Central Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University had explored several possible sites to monitor suspected particulates in and around the Kathmandu valley during the year of 2008. Based on existing knowledge of atmospheric transport processes over the valley, four sites were identified from where representative data can be generated. However, the boundary layer...
The Radio-nuclides monitoring stations (RN) utilize complex and sophisticated equipment due to development of scientific and technological discipline. The upgrading and investment on RN is coupled with requirements ranging from initial capital investment for infrastructures and human resources development for station operators. The CTBTO operates RN stations which essentially need trained...
An Establishment is an institution registered under the Secure Signatory Account of a Signatory State for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for access to IMS data and IDC products as defined by the Preparatory Commission and its Working Group B. The current policy allows access by up to six establishments per State Signatory. An establishment might be the provisional National...
Increasing the population of cities, developing civil projects and urban areas near active faults and lots of similar phenomena pushes the development of seismic networks. These types of networks are rapidly increasing in Iran. Using the highest advantages of these networks will happen when they became telemetric while it is impossible financially point of view. Overcoming this problem a new...
The International Seismological Centre (ISC) offers a special visualization interface of its database to State Parties of the Comprehensive-Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT). One of its scopes is the visualization of the waveform availability of non-IMS (International Monitoring System) stations that refer to the events of the International Data Centre - Reviewed Event Bulletin (IDC-REB). A problem often...
Automatic processing system at IDC is a large complex software system; even minor modifications of this software require rigorous testing. Much of the IDC legacy software currently lacks any kind of unit or regression testing, with most of the testing being performed by domain experts running the software manually. Development of the Continuous Automated Testing System (CATS) is an ongoing...
The building of the IMS seismic network is reaching its final stages. The installation of 160 seismic stations out of 170 stations planned is completed. Out of the 10 non-operational stations 4 are in different stages of installation, and for 6 stations no action was done yet. Moreover, some of the installed stations has not transmitted data for several years, and therefore should be...
The Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) provides access to IMS data and IDC products through the single secure signatory account (SSA) established for each State Signatory. Each State Signatory with a SSA has established at least one National Data Centre (NDC) through which data and products are accessed. As of December 2014, there were 134 SSAs. Statistics show that, overall, volume of...
The International Training Center was established at the premises of KNDC in Almaty (Kazakhstan) under financial and methodical support of the Norwegian MFA and NORSAR. The Center task was to re-establish the cooperation of Central Asian seismologists that was lost after the USSR collapse, arrange data exchange and activate joint research work. Since 2010, for the specialists of five Central...
Different approaches and philosophy can be applied for measurements of concentrations of radionuclides in the environment and evaluation of results. Usually the frequency and requirements for precision is the subject of following usage of results and decisions that are done with reference to these results. As example, the different approach for reliability and verification of data of...
The National Data Centre Suriname receives data from the International Data Centre in Vienna on daily bases of three seismologic stations. If there is any event than we ask for additional data from the IDC. Than we analyzed these data to determine if this event is an natural (Earthquake, Volcano eruption etc..) or manmade (Nuclear explosion , Mine explosion etc..) event. The characterization...
Changing the coordinates or responsibility of the IMS stations Member states could propose amendments to the treaty. Changes would be implemented after EIF. Resolving issues of commissioning of the stations should be dealt with without (if possible) changing the treaty. Para five of part I of protocol: the methods of cooperation between the CTBTO and hosting countries should, on a case by case...
The Capacity Building Programme aims at integrating States Signatories to fully participate in and contribute to the implementation of the CTBTO monitoring and verification system. The CTBTO using its own funding as well as EU voluntary contributions (through EU Council Decisions III, IV and V) aimed at facilitating and strengthening States Signatories' participation in the CTBT verification...
During interactive analysis retiming and frequency wave number analysis (FK analysis) are performed to refine arrival time, azimuth and slowness estimates of automatic detections. Differences between automatically and interactively obtained parameters are investigated using data from all primary seismic array stations of the IMS network during the year 2014. The differences shed light on the...
We use waveform data recording of the CTBTO's stations to analyse the local characteristics of each station using Spectral Analysis Method. From analysis we can determine the local characteristics such as Background Noise and Dominant Period. From the frequency s width of the Background noise we assume the sources of the noise disturbance. The results might give recomendations for the CTBTO...
It said in this theme 4 that “Each National Data Centre will have its own focus and accompanying procedures. Of special interest is the integration of IMS data and Treaty monitoring into national operations procedures. The optimization of performance has many facets, and contributions are invited on any subject that impinges on the efficiency, quality, timeliness, reliability and...
Until 2009 the quality control function within the International Data Centre (IDC) of the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) carried out quality assessments of the Reviewed Event Bulletin (REB) through comparisons with the two other global seismological bulletins, i.e. the Preliminary Determination of Epicenters Monthly Listing of the U.S. Geological Survey and the bulletin of the...
Nigerian National Network of Seismic stations (NNNSS) has been generating data since 2009 that have given operators slight insight of a trend connecting instrumentally recorded events with historical ones observed in Nigeria in the last 70 years. Recording capabilities of local and teleseismic events by the network have been boosted with deployment of more advanced seismic equipment to Nigeria...
An accurate reconstruction and reliable prediction of weather situation are desired to understand, model and predict suspected particulate transport and deposition over the region of interest. Reconstruction and prediction of diverse weather situations that could possibly prevail over the extreme terrains of Himalayas at high spatial resolution have been remained to be of great challenge. In...
The Science and Technology of the CTBT offer very important opportunity for collaboration in Research and Development efforts which holds potentials for identifying new areas where the use of the CTBT data and products, verification technologies, education resources and the e-learning availability can be effective towards making the world more secured. Participation in the 2014 CTBT Academic...
Malaysia has established the CTBT National Data Centre (MY-NDC) in December 2005 which is located at the Malaysian Nuclear Agency. This poster aims to present the application of International Monitoring System (IMS) data and International Data Centre (IDC) products at the Malaysian CTBT National Data Centre (MY-NDC). Since its establishment, MY-NDC received data from a few IMS stations. MY-NDC...
The Global Seismographic Network (GSN) is a state-of-the-art, globally distributed network of 150+ permanent seismological and geophysical sensors, and is a cooperative partnership between the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The GSN coordinates closely with other international seismic networks through the International Federation...
The ARCES seismic array is currently in a major recapitalization/modernization phase. In a first stage in September 2014 NORSAR replaced all essential acquisition and recording equipment. Each of the 25 sites is now instrumented with a three-component broadband seismometer (Guralp CMG-3T hybrid) and a Guralp EAM digitizer. The central site has a very-broadband instrument (360s -50Hz), whereas...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) basically established to monitor any probable nuclear tests all around the world with the goal of putting an end to any kind of tests and consequently nuclear weapons as well. Beside main verification regime technology and instruments, national technical means could be used as a strong verification mean too. Local instruments could...
The modern system of seismological monitoring of the Republic of Belarus includes continuous 24-hour observations of seismic events both natural and induced of the wide range of energy and distances, data processing, storage and analysis. It provides the effective on-line monitoring of the seismic situation. But it meets the new requirements of seismic protection in connection with the new...
We have engaged in a multiyear effort to measure seismic amplitudes for regional phase (Pn, Pg, Sn, Lg) seismic amplitudes in order to accurately map out the attenuation structure of the lithosphere. Each phase has different sensitivity, allowing us to tomographically map out the Qp and Qs structure of the crust and upper mantle. We have already obtained attenuation models of Eurasia and North...
The aim of this study is to examine the impact of capacity building activities of the CTBTO on the use of IMS data and IDC products by State Parties in the Africa region. The CTBTO capacity building activities were fund by contributions from voluntary organizations. State Parties in Africa received donations of capacity building systems (CBS). Before the arrival of the CBS most State Parties...
Maintenance management information systems (MMIS) have evolved over the past decade to provide real time system design configuration with "error free" data, maintenance tasks with step by step instructions, and auto-populate reports used for logistical support and resource optimization is enabled by integrating parts marking with machine readable code with the MMIS. As the number of parts and...
Maintenance of sensor systems can be codified to increase operational efficiency and decreased down time. We used successive refinements of failure definitions to define a fault tree analysis (FTA) structure. Benefits of FTA include: FTA provides a visual, logic model of the basic causes and intermediate events leading to the top event. FTA can help prioritize resources and costs. FTA can...
I32KE is a seven element array infra-sound station located in Karura forest six kilometers NNE of Nairobi, Kenya.The elements are interlinked by fiber optic(FO)to the central processing facility (CRF). The station has experienced logistical as well as security challenges in the past few years.These include obsolesce,cable vandalism,lack of readily available spares,long periods between...
Malin seismic array (AKASG), works as IMS’s PS45 from 2002. It consists of 24 seismic sites and central facility CF-AKASG, based on SAIC technology. AKASG has telemetry system architecture, designed around eight nodes (key sites), that act as concentrators for the data produced by connected sites. During last 13 years of operation, AKASG retains mission capability. Despite on: losе of service...
In recent years, number of seismic stations in a seismograph network and/or a seismic array increased dramatically. Real-time transmission and processing of continuous waveforms have been facilitated by modern digital technology. 'Data intensive research’ becomes one of the characteristics of the application of such a monitoring system. As a result, modern seismological monitoring has evolved...
The International Monitoring System (IMS) Network of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), is to consist of 337 monitoring facilities, scattered around the globe, of four different technologies. One of the mandates of the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS), in cooperation with the Station Operator and Host Country is to ensure that the global network remains operational and...
The International Monitoring System Network will consist of 337 facilities, composed of four different technologies with a variety of designs, deployed in diverse environments around the globe. The sustainment of such a network over many generations and to high level of availability is challenging, and the cost could become unbearable. The Monitoring Facilities Support (MFS) section is already...
