The 1946 magnitude 6.1 earthquake in the Valais: site-effects as contributor to the damage

The January 25, 1946 earthquake in the central Valais region in southwest Switzerland was the strongest for the last 150years. It reached an epicentral intensity Io of VIII in the area of Sierre. The Swiss Earthquake Catalogue (ECOS 2002) assigns a moment magnitude of Mw = 6.1 to the event. Assessment of recordings from European stations resulted in a moment magnitude of 5.8 (Bernardi et al. 2005). The earthquake caused moderate to high damage within a circle of about a 25 kilometer radius. Slight damage occurred up to a distance of 200 kilometers from the epicenter. The goal of this study was to reconstruct the damage field and consider its possible site-effects. We used an approach combining historical research with seismo-/geological investigation including a large number of experiments measuring the fundamental frequency of resonance and the shear-wave velocities of the sedimentary layers, using the characteristics of ambient vibration. This kind of research is relevant, since a huge alpine valley characterizes the Valais region, showing ground conditions that make site-effects likely for earthquakes. While we searched for damage in an unlimited area, our investigation of site-effects was limited to the Rhone valley and to Sion and Sierre in the central Valais region in particular. Since a contemporary damage assessment has survived in fragments only, the results of our historical investigation are incomplete. Nevertheless, it was possible to describe the losses within the epicentral region adequately enough to discuss possible site-effects. Our results show that Valaisan districts with a high percentage of settlement on the lacustrine and fluviatile deposits of the Rhone valley show higher losses than other districts. The villages of Sierre and Sion we investigated in more detail. Sion is located on compacted sediments with relatively high shear-wave velocities. The city suffered only moderate damage, rather regularly distributed. In Sierre, on the other hand, we identified two zones of significantly increased damage, in which site-effects appear a very probable contributor. Local two- or three-dimensional resonance phenomena play an important role in explaining this featur

A combined inversion of Rayleigh wave dispersion and 2‐D resonance frequencies

Shear wave velocities of the sediment fill of a deep Alpine valley are estimated from ambient noise recorded on linear and circular arrays. We propose a combined inversion of 2‐D resonance frequencies identified from site‐to‐reference spectral ratios and Rayleigh wave dispersion curves obtained from frequency‐wavenumber analysis. The method is tested on synthetic noise data and on noise recorded at three sites in the Rhône valley in Southern Switzerland. Previous studies have shown that 2‐D resonance dominates the ambient vibration wavefield at low frequencies at the investigated sites. Inversion techniques which assume that the noise wavefield consists mainly of horizontally propagating surface waves will, therefore, fail to resolve shear wave velocities at depths below around 500 m. We show that standard techniques lead to an overestimation of shear wave velocities at depth when applied to synthetic and observed ambient noise. The combined inversion is able to resolve the shear wave velocities in the initial velocity model when applied to synthetic noise records. Application of the method to observed ambient noise improves resolution at depth and yields realistic shear wave velocities for the lower part of the sediment fil

Processing of translational and rotational motions of surface waves: performance analysis and applications to single sensor and to array measurements

The analysis of rotational seismic motions has received considerable attention in the last years. Recent advances in sensor technologies allow us to measure directly the rotational components of the seismic wavefield. Today this is achieved with improved accuracy and at an affordable cost. The analysis and the study of rotational motions are, to a certain extent, less developed than other aspects of seismology due to the historical lack of instrumental observations. This is due to both the technical challenges involved in measuring rotational motions and to the widespread belief that rotational motions are insignificant. This paper addresses the joint processing of translational and rotational motions from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives. Our attention focuses on the analysis of motions of both Rayleigh waves and Love waves from recordings of single sensors and from an array of sensors. From the theoretical standpoint, analysis of Fisher information (FI) allows us to understand how the different measurement types contribute to the estimation of quantities of geophysical interest. In addition, we show how rotational measurements resolve ambiguity on parameter estimation in the single sensor setting. We quantify the achievable estimation accuracy by means of Cramér-Rao bound (CRB). From the practical standpoint, a method for the joint processing of rotational and translational recordings to perform maximum likelihood (ML) estimation is presented. The proposed technique estimates parameters of Love waves and Rayleigh waves from single sensor or array recordings. We support and illustrate our findings with a comprehensive collection of numerical examples. Applications to real recordings are also show

Estimating Rayleigh wave particle motion from three-component array analysis of ambient vibrations

Several methods have been proposed in the past years to extract the Rayleigh wave ellipticity from horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios of single station ambient noise recordings. The disadvantage of this set of techniques is the difficulty in clearly identifying and separating the contribution of higher modes. In most cases, only the fundamental mode of ellipticity can be identified. Moreover, it is generally difficult to correct for the energy of SH and Love waves present in the horizontal components of the ambient vibration wavefield. We introduce a new methodology to retrieve Rayleigh wave ellipticity using high-resolution frequency-wavenumber array analysis. The technique is applied to the three components of motion and is based on the assumption that an amplitude maximum in the f-k cross-spectrum must represent the true power amplitude of the corresponding signal. In the case of Rayleigh waves, therefore, the ratio between maxima obtained from the horizontal (radial-polarized) and vertical components of motion will also represent the frequency-dependent ellipticity function. Consequently, if we can identify the Rayleigh dispersion curves of several modes on the f-k plane, then the corresponding modal ellipticity patterns can also be separated and extracted. To test the approach, synthetic and real data sets were processed. In all tested cases, a reliable estimation of segments of the fundamental mode ellipticity was obtained. The identification of higher modes is possible in most cases. The quality of results depends on the selected array geometry and the signal-to-noise ratio, with a major improvement achieved by increasing the number of receivers employed during the survey. An experiment conducted in the town of Visp (Switzerland) allowed the retrieval of portions of ellipticity curves up to the second Rayleigh higher mode, using two concentric circular array configurations of 14 and 11 receivers eac

Merger and acquisition: The critical factor of post-merger and post-acquisition integration

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) are often used by companies to grow at a remarkable speed. As M&As lead to immediate changes in the companies involved, certain preparation measurements should be enacted before the merger is closed. Numerous papers were written about the influence of post-M&A integration (PMI) on the success of the combined company. The analysis made clear that the anxiety and uncertainty of employees can be highly influenced by the PMI process which thereafter has a positive impact on the outcome of the merger. Several cases of M&As that failed prove that the non-assessment of cultures beforehand the M&A was the reason of failure. Therefore, this thesis decided to focus on the actual planning of the PMI

A theoretical investigation of average H/V ratios

The mode summation method and a finite difference technique are applied to investigate the spectral ratio between the horizontal and vertical components (H/V ratio) of ambient vibrations and to explore the variation of the resonance frequency and the amplitude and shape of polarization as a function of the structure and the source positions. Layered structural models are used by assuming a large number of sources distributed around a receiver, with shallow source depths that are randomly assigned. We identify stable parts of the H/V ratios that are independent of the source distance and are dominated by the ellipticity of the fundamental-mode Rayleigh wave in the frequency band between the fundamental frequency of resonance of the unconsolidated sediments and the first minimum of the average H/V ratio. The ellipticity in this frequency band is determined by the layering of the sediments. The numerical simulations are compared with observations at a site where the thickness and velocity structure of the unconsolidated sediments are known from S-wave and surface wave measurements. Two methods are applied to compute the H/V ratio, the classical method in the frequency domain and a method based on frequency-time analysis that allows us to locate P-SV wavelets in the time-series. The main problem in comparing synthetics with observations is the contribution of SH waves in the observed H/V ratios. We propose a method to minimize these effects and the effects of the superposition of different incoming P-SV waves. An inversion scheme is applied to the stable parts of the observed H/V ratio, based on a genetic algorithm, to retrieve the S-wave velocity structure from a single ambient vibration recor

Empirical evidence of local seismic effects at sites with pronounced topography: a systematic approach

The recent growth of seismic monitoring networks allows for systematic studies of local seismic effects at sites with pronounced topography. We applied a terrain classification method to identify such sites within Swiss and Japanese networks and compiled a data set of high-quality earthquake recordings. As a number of recent studies have found local effects to be directional at sites with strong topographic features, polarization analysis of particle motion was performed and azimuthally dependent resonant frequencies were estimated. The same procedure was also applied for available ambient vibration recordings. Moreover, average residuals with respect to ground motion prediction models for a reference bedrock were calculated to estimate the average amplification or deamplification for each station. On one hand, observed amplifications are found to be tightly linked with ground motion directionality as estimated by polarization analysis for both earthquake and ambient vibration recordings. On the other hand, we found no clear relation between local topographic features and observed amplification, so the local subsurface properties (i.e. shear wave velocity structure) seem to play the key role and not the geometry itsel

Attenuation of seismic shear wave energy in Switzerland

Modelling the attenuation of shear wave energy is an important component of seismic hazard analysis. Previous studies have shown how attenuation, particularly in the uppermost layers of the crust, is regionally dependent. The impact of this is that the decay of energy radiating from an earthquake will vary from place to place. To quantify the regional attenuation in Switzerland we model the Fourier spectral amplitude of small-to-moderate earthquakes, recorded on the local seismic networks. High-frequency decay is parametrized by Q and κ, while apparent geometrical spreading models account for the frequency-independent decay of energy. We analyse ground motion encompassing the significant duration of shaking to provide models that are useful for the purpose of seismic hazard analysis. Two methods are used to estimate the whole path attenuation parameter, t*: first, a simultaneous fit of the source model and attenuation effects across the entire spectral bandwidth for earthquakes with M > 2; and secondly, a linear fit of an attenuation model to the high-frequency part of the spectrum for earthquakes with M > 3.5. The t* parameter is found to vary with hypocentral distance consistent with a weakly attenuating crust and strongly attenuating uppermost layer. 1-D tomographic inversions indicate a profile of increasing Q with depth down to the Moho. Frequency-independent decay is parametrized using a three-part model which allows for the inclusion of Moho reflection phases in the spectrum in the range of 20-140 km in the Swiss Foreland and from 70 to 140 km in the Swiss Alp

Time-Frequency-Wavenumber Analysis of Surface Waves Using the Continuous Wavelet Transform

A modified approach to surface wave dispersion analysis using active sources is proposed. The method is based on continuous recordings, and uses the continuous wavelet transform to analyze the phase velocity dispersion of surface waves. This gives the possibility to accurately localize the phase information in time, and to isolate the most significant contribution of the surface waves. To extract the dispersion information, then, a hybrid technique is applied to the narrowband filtered seismic recordings. The technique combines the flexibility of the slant stack method in identifying waves that propagate in space and time, with the resolution of f-k approaches. This is particularly beneficial for higher mode identification in cases of high noise levels. To process the continuous wavelet transform, a new mother wavelet is presented and compared to the classical and widely used Morlet type. The proposed wavelet is obtained from a raised-cosine envelope function (Hanning type). The proposed approach is particularly suitable when using continuous recordings (e.g., from seismological-like equipment) since it does not require any hardware-based source triggering. This can be subsequently done with the proposed method. Estimation of the surface wave phase delay is performed in the frequency domain by means of a covariance matrix averaging procedure over successive wave field excitations. Thus, no record stacking is necessary in the time domain and a large number of consecutive shots can be used. This leads to a certain simplification of the field procedures. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, we tested it on synthetics as well on real field data. For the real case we also combine dispersion curves from ambient vibrations and active measurement

"Terrae motus factus est”: earthquakes in Switzerland before A.D. 1000. A critical approach

We focus on Swiss earthquakes in antiquity and the early medieval period before A.D. 1000. We have information on less than half a dozen earthquakes within this era, since written records for the first half of the first millennium A.D. are minimal, and there is little hope of finding more written evidence for earthquakes. Furthermore, interpreting the documents at hand is somewhat complex. For the 6th century Gregory of Tours in Historia Francorum gives hints of a rockslide near the castle Tauredunum (Le Grammont) in the Swiss canton Valais, an event that has been considered in the literature as caused by an earthquake. The Carolingian period (ca. 750-950) included the rise of some very important cultural centers in various parts of today's Switzerland. For instance, the ecclesiastical culture in St. Gallen generated a remarkable number of written records, which survived for our use in a unique manner. From the 9th and 10th centuries, we have evidence for earthquakes in the years 849, 867, 902, and 944. However, information on them remains so scarce that their location and intensity are generally difficult to assess. Nevertheless, the finding of a new document - a memoir written by the abbot of Reichenau - offers some insight into the A.D. 849 event and its reportedly aftershock