The EGU2010 SM1.3 Seismic Centers Data Acquisition session: an introduction to Antelope, EarthWorm and SeisComP, and their use around the World

Session «SM1.3 – Seismic Centers Data Acquisition» at the General Assembly 2010 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), taking place in Vienna (Austria) between 2–7 May 2010, was organized to present both differences and similarities in operations by different types of seismic data centers in order to share experiences and stimulate constructive discussions. Only a few, widely used, "all-in-one" data acquisition and processing packages are available for seismic data centers, two public domain tools (SeisComP and EarthWorm) and one commercial tool (Antelope). The choice for any particular tool may depend on many different criteria, from operational aspects to scientific results, or on the availability of specific requirements in relation to a specific mission. The development of EarthWorm originally started in 1993 in the USA to replace aging and vendor tied regional processing systems. Antelope, on the other hand, started around 1996 with the aim to have real-time data flow from the field sensors to the scientist. SeisComP also started in the nineties as real-time data acquisition and processing system and evolved initially towards an early warning system for seismic observatories. Protocols have been established to exchange real-time waveform data between the different packages

EGU2013 SM1.4/GI1.6 session: "Improving seismic networks performances: from site selection to data integration"

The number and quality of seismic stations and networks in Europe continually improves, nevertheless there is always scope to optimize their performance. In this session we welcomed contributions from all aspects of seismic network installation, operation and management. This includes site selection; equipment testing and installation; planning and implementing communication paths; policies for redundancy in data acquisition, processing and archiving; and integration of different datasets including GPS and OBS

Characterization of the CBC2 readout ASIC for the CMS strip-tracker high-luminosity upgrade

The CMS Binary Chip 2 (CBC2) is a full-scale prototype ASIC developed for the front-end readout of the high-luminosity upgrade of the CMS silicon strip tracker. The 254-channel, 130 nm CMOS ASIC is designed for the binary readout of double-layer modules, and features cluster-width discrimination and coincidence logic for detecting high-PT track candidates. The chip was delivered in January 2013 and has since been bump-bonded to a dual-chip hybrid and extensively tested. The CBC2 is fully functional and working to specification: we present the result of electrical characterization of the chip, including gain, noise, threshold scan and power consumption, together with the performance of the stub finding logic. Finally we will outline the plan for future developments towards the production version

The North East Italy (NI) broadband seismic network run by OGS: experience in improving the long period performances

The NI broadband seismic network is designed to monitor regional seismic activity of North East Italy and surroundings as well as to provide high quality data for various research projects in regional and global broadband seismology, like moment tensor determination. The network, grown during the last 30 years within local Civil Defence agencies and neighbouring scientific institutions cooperation, currently consists of 11 digital broadband stations equipped with Streckeisen STS-2 and STS-1, Nanometrics Trillium 40 and Guralp CMG-3T seismometers with 120 and 40 seconds long period corners; most of the seismic stations are also equipped with accelerometers. Waveforms and parametric data of the NI seismic network are transmitted in real time to the Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Provincia di Trento Civil Defence Agencies, to the Italian National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and to the Earth Science Department (DST) of the Trieste University in Italy, to the Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Vienna, Austria and to the Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia (ARSO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia to support emergency management and seismological studies in the whole Alps–Dinarides junction zone. The commercial Antelope software suite from BRTT has been chosen as the common basis for real time data exchange, rapid location of earthquakes and alerting. In order to guarantee high quality installations, we sustain a continuous effort that involves searches for appropriate sites, away from sources of long period noise, improvements in installation procedures and insulation techniques, maintenance of transfer function files and routine monitoring of noise conditions at individual existing station. The quality of the seismic data is checked through the noise Power Spectral Density (PSD) analysis. The insulation equipment that we designed for our network is a local adaptation of the pressure-thermal insulation experimented and routinely used by the world wide GEOFON seismic network and the German regional seismic network: examples and performances of a typical OGS installation will be shown

Monitoring snow avalanches with seismic stations in north-eastern Italy: a test case

The Regional Agency for the Environmental Prevention and Protection of Veneto (Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e Protezione Ambientale del Veneto, ARPAV) was established in October 2007 to monitor and prevent environmental risks in the Veneto region, in north-eastern Italy. The Italian National Institute for Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, OGS), after the strong earthquake (magnitude M=6.4) occurred in 1976 in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, started to operate the North- East Italy (NI) seismic network: it currently consists of 11 very sensitive broad band seismic stations and 21 more simple short period seismic stations, all acquired in real time. OGS also exchanges seismic data with other Italian, Austrian and Slovenian agencies in the surrounding areas, which gives a total number of 73 stations acquired in real time. This makes the OGS the reference agency for the monitoring of the seismic activity in north-eastern Italy. Detecting avalanches by means of seismic stations is indeed a difficult job because of the poor snow-to-earth coupling and the high dumping of the snow. In June 2007 OGS installed in cooperation with the Italian National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV) a broad band seismic station in Agordo, a site located on the Dolomites mountains in Veneto. In the first half of December 2008, the Southern Alps have been affected by 2 episodes of intense snowfall: in the whole Dolomites, above the altitude of 1200 m, between 250 and 350 cm of fresh snow have fallen: similar snowfall events occurred in the last 80 years only in December 1979, 1960, 1959 and 1951. The large amount of snow fell in the 2 episodes, on November 28th - December 6th and on December 10th-17th, failed to consolidate and for several days over a large part of the Alps the danger of avalanches was high (grade 4 out of 5 of the European level system). In the Dolomites, the area of interest of this work, the spontaneous avalanche phenomena was very intense, both during the snowfalls and subsequently. During the 2 periods several large avalanches have fallen reaching the bottom of the valley and were detected by the seismic stations: avalanches of such characteristics were not observed since 1987 (January) and 1977 (February). Given the intensity of the snowfalls, it has not been possible to date all the big avalanches, but only those closest to the towns. In this work we analyze the seismic recordings and relate them to the main characteristics of the avalanches

The OGS experience in rapid determination of source parameters and ShakeMaps for NE Italy

OGS manages an integrated seismic network designed to monitor regional seismic activity of North-East Italy (NI) and surroundings. The network includes 11 digital broadband seismometers and 27 short period stations. Waveforms and parametric data are exchanged in real time with the local Civil Defence agencies, the INGV, the Earth Science Department of the University of Trieste, the Zentralanstalt für Meterologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna, and the Agencija Republike Slovenije za Okolje (ARSO) in Ljubljana, in order to support emergency management and seismological studies in the whole Alps–Dinarides junction zone. The Antelope software suite from BRTT has been chosen as the common basis for real time data exchange, rapid location of earthquakes and alerting

Emergency Department Overcrowding. A Retrospective Spatial Analysis and the Geocoding of Accesses. A Pilot Study in Rome

The overcrowding of first aid facilities creates considerable hardship and problems which have repercussions on patients’ wellbeing, the time needed for a diagnosis, and on the quality of the assistance. The basic objective of this contribution, based on the data collected by the Hospital Policlinico Umberto I in Rome (Lazio region, Italy), is to carry out a territorial screening of the municipality using GIS applications and spatial analyses aimed at reducing—in terms of triage—code white (inappropriate) attendances, after having identified the areas of greatest provenance of improperly used emergency room access. Working in a GIS environment and using functions for geocoding, we have tested an experimental model aimed at giving a close-up geographical-sanitary look at the situation: recognizing the territorial sectors in Rome which contribute to amplifying the Policlinico Umberto I emergency room overcrowding; leading up to an improvement of the situation; promoting greater awareness and knowledge of the services available on the territory, a closer relationship between patient and regular doctor (general practitioner, GP) or Local Healthcare Unit and a more efficient functioning of the emergency room. In particular, we have elaborated a “source” map from which derive all the others and it is a dot map on which all the codes white have been geolocalized on a satellite image through geocoding. We have produced three sets made up of three digital cartographic elaborations each, constructed on the census sections, the census areas and the sub-municipal areas, according to data aggregation, for absolute and relative values, and using different templates. Finally, following the same methodology and steps, we elaborated another dot map about all the codes red to provide another kind of information and input for social utility. In the near future, this system could be tested on a platform that spatially analyzes the emergency department (ED) accesses in near-real-time in order to facilitate the identification of critical territorial issues and intervene in a shorter time to regulate the influx of patients to the ED

Testing the global capabilities of the Antelope software suite: fast location and Mb determination of teleseismic events using the ASAIN and GSN seismic networks

The Italian National Institute for Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, OGS) is running the Antarctic Seismographic Argentinean Italian Network (ASAIN), made of 5 seismic stations located in the Scotia Sea region in Antarctica and in Argentina: data from these stations are transferred in real time to the OGS headquarters in Trieste (Italy) via satellite links. OGS is also running, in close cooperation with the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Civil Defense, the North East (NI) Italy seismic network, making use of the Antelope commercial software suite from BRTT as the main acquisition system. As a test to check the global capabilities of Antelope, we set up an instance of Antelope acquiring data in real time from both the regional ASAIN seismic network in Antarctica and a subset of the Global Seismic Network (GSN) funded by the Incorporated Research Institution for Seismology (IRIS). The facilities of the IRIS Data Management System, and specifically the IRIS Data Management Center, were used for real time access to waveform required in this study. Preliminary results over 1 month period indicated that about 82% of the earthquakes with magnitude M>5.0 listed in the PDE catalogue of the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) were also correctly detected by Antelope, with an average location error of 0.05 degrees and average body wave magnitude Mb estimation error below 0.1. The average time difference between event origin time and the actual time of event determination by Antelope was of about 45’: the comparison with 20’, the IASPEI91 P-wave travel time for 180 degrees distance, and 25’, the estimate of our test system data latency, indicate that Antelope is a serious candidate for regional and global early warning systems. Updated figures calculated over a longer period of time will be presented and discussed

Testing the Antelope software suite to realize a distributed seismic database among Austria, Northeastern Italy and Slovenia

Since 2002 the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG, http://www.zamg.ac.at/), the Centro di Ricerche Sismologiche (CRS, http://www.crs.inogs.it) of the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra (DST, http://www.dst.univ.trieste.it/) of the Università di Trieste and the Agencija Republike Slovenije Za Okolje (ARSO, http://www.arso.gov.si/) are involved in the EU INTERREG IIIA project “Trans-national seismological networks in the South-Eastern Alps”. The Antelope software suite has been chosen as the common basis for real time data exchange, rapid location of earthquakes and alerting. The Antelope software suite has the capability to exchange data in real time among data centres: for this purpose the standard “orb2orb” software module is used. It uses a proprietary protocol and a point-to-point client/server architecture to exchange data. The last release of the Antelope software suite contains a more sophisticated version of this data exchange module: it is named “orbxchange”. “orbxchange” is a multithreaded version of “orb2orb” which supervises multiple “orb2orb” copies specified in a parameter file; it has the option of switching to alternate servers when no data is being copied from the primary. A distributed real time seismic database has been so established by connecting ZAMG, CRS/OGS, DST/UTS and ARSO Antelope servers with “orbxchange” modules. A test of the above described “orbxchange” features has been conducted artificially shutting down the Antelope servers and/or the data links between them: the results in the data coverage of the multiple copies of the distributed database will be shown. The expected improvement in data availability not only will be very useful for the institutional activities (like rapid earthquake location with magnitude estimation) of the four institutions involved in this test, but moreover its natural extension will be in more mission critical applications, like in public civil protection applications and rapid notification of inherent authorities

Performance measures for object detection evaluation

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We propose a new procedure for quantitative evaluation of object detection algorithms. The procedure consists of a matching stage for finding correspondences between reference and output objects, an accuracy score that is sensitive to object shapes as well as boundary and fragmentation errors, and a ranking step for final ordering of the algorithms using multiple performance indicators. The procedure is illustrated on a building detection task where the resulting rankings are consistent with the visual inspection of the detection maps. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved