Earthquake sound perception

Sound is an effect produced by almost all earthquakes. Using a web-based questionnaire on earthquake effects that included questions relating to seismic sound, we collected 77,000 responses for recent shallow Italian earthquakes. An analysis of audibility attenuation indicated that the decrease of the percentage of respondents hearing the sound was proportional to the logarithm of the epicentral distance and linearly dependent on earthquake magnitude, in accordance with the behavior of ground displacement. Even if this result was based on Italian data, qualitative agreement with the results of theoretical displacement, and of a similar study based on French seismicity suggests wider validity. We also found that, given earthquake magnitude, audibility increased together with the observed macroseismic intensity, leading to the possibility of accounting for sound audibility in intensity assessment. Magnitude influenced this behavior, making small events easier to recognize, as suggested by their frequency content

How Observer Conditions Impact Earthquake Perception

Intensity scales define the criteria used to determine different levels of shaking in relation to environmental effects. Objective evaluations of low intensity degrees based on transient effects may be difficult. In particular, estimations for the number of people feeling an earthquake are critical, and are qualitatively described by words such as “few”, “many”, and “most” for determining various intensity levels. In general, such qualitative amounts are converted into specific percentages for each macroseismic scale. Additionally, estimations of macroseismic intensity are influenced by variables that are mentioned in macroseismic scale degree descriptions. For example, the Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg (MCS; Sieberg, 1930) and the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scales (Wood and Neumann, 1931) describe the intensity II as “Felt only by a few people, extremely susceptible, in perfectly quiet situations, almost always on the upper floors of buildings”. Another example is the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS) (Grunthal, 1998) that describes the intensity V as “felt indoors by most, outdoors by few. Many sleeping people awake”. In this work, we focus on two variables referred to as people’s physical “situation” (what were you doing?), here categorized as “sleeping”, “at rest”, or “in motion”; and the observer’s “location”, here categorized as “higher floors”, “lower floors”, and “outdoors”. Both variables have a partial influence on intensity assessments because they condition vibration perception. However, it is important to study, using an experimental method, the weights of these variables in the quantification of felt effects. Musson (2005a) also recognized the influence of such conditions on the number of people feeling an earthquake, stating that the proportion of people in different conditions “are generally difficult to quantify in any case”. Today, we have a large amount of data available through the macroseismic web site “haisentitoilterremoto” associated with specific observer conditions. Using this data, a study of these effects is possible. For this analysis, we placed attention on transitory effects that, in the past, could not be easily studied due to the intrinsic difficulty in collecting this type of data. The aim of this work was to specifically analyze and quantify how the observer’s “situation” and “location” influence earthquake perception suggesting a new scale description that can be easily used for low intensity estimation

Web-based macroseismic survey in Italy: method validation and results

A new method of macroseismic surveys, based on voluntary collaboration through the Internet, has been running at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) since July 2007. The macroseismic questionnaire is addressed to a single non-specialist; reported effects are statistically analysed to extrapolate a probabilistic estimate of Mercalli Cancani Sieberg and European Macroseismic Scale intensities for that observer. Maps of macroseismic intensity are displayed online in almost real time and are continuously updated when new data are made available. For densely inhabited zones, we have received reports of felt effects for even very small events (M=2). Six earthquakes are presented here, showing the ability of the method to give fast and interesting results. The effects reported in questionnaires coming from three towns are carefully analysed and assigned intensities are compared with those derived from traditional macroseismic surveys, showing the reliability of our web-based method

Northern Sicily, September 6, 2002earthquake: investigation on peculiarmacroseismic effects

The Northern Sicily, September 6, 2002 earthquake (Ml = 5.6, MW = 5.9) is investigated under macroseismic aspect: peculiar effects are collected besides standard effects normally used to define Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg (MCS) intensity. They include sound heard during the quake, fear felt and a simple qualitative description of ground movement felt. Spatial coverage of such information is dense enough to be statistically processed, to give an interpolated, smoothed field for each data type. Sound heard is compared with theoretical sound field produced considering source geometry and transmission of waves to air, it also confirms the Southern Sicily amplification disclosed by macroseismic intensity values. Fear felt is also in agreement with macroseismic intensity field while type of ground motion is a partly independent aspect

Influence of observation floor and building height on macroseismic intensity

The perception of an earthquake depends on whether the observer is located on a lower or upper floor within a building. Macroseismic scales propose only a qualitative description of the varying effects felt that are dependent on the floor the observer is on. To quantify these effects, in this study, we analyze 45,000 macroseismic questionnaires collected in Italy reporting on transitory effects. The questionnaires pertain to buildings no more than 10 stories high and are derived from municipalities experiencing a Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg (MCS) intensity less than or equal to VII with the majority being III and IV. We find that the intensity variation caused by the increased shaking on upper floors can be quantified. The upper floor intensity increases by 0.4 MCS compared with ground and underground levels. After correcting for an average floor-dependence factor, we find a further building height effect evident in short buildings that are probably exposed to less intense shaking. This effect displays a variation with the hypocentral distance reaching an MCS intensity of -0.3 at distances on the order of 200 km

Influence of strong electromagnetic discharges on the dynamics of earthquakes time distribution in the Bishkek test area (Central Asia)

From 08/01/1983 to 28/03/1990, at the Bishkek ElectroMagnetic (EM) test site (Northern Tien Shan and Chu Valley area, Central Asia), strong currents, up to 2.5 kA, were released at a 4.5 km long electrical (grounded) dipole. This area is seismically active and a catalogue with about 14100 events from 1975 to 1996 has been analyzed. The seismic catalogue was divided into three parts: 1975-1983 first part with no EM experiments, 1983-1990 second part during EM experiments and 1988-1996 after experiments part. Qualitative and quantitative time series non- linear analysis was applied to waiting times of earthquakes to the above three sub catalogue periods. The qualitative approach includes visual inspection of reconstructed phase space, Iterated Function Systems (IFS) and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA). The quantitative approach followed correlation integral calculation of reconstructed phase space of waiting time distribution, with noise reduction and surrogate testing methods. Moreover the Lempel- Ziv algorithmic complexity measure (LZC) was calculated. General dynamics of earthquakes’ temporal distribution around the test area, reveals properties of low dimensional non linearity. Strong EM discharges lead to the increase in extent of regularity in earthquakes temporal distribution. After cessation of EM experiments the earthquakes’ temporal distribution becomes much more random than before experiments. To avoid non valid conclusions several tests were applied to our data set: differentiation of the time series was applied to check results not affected by non stationarity; the surrogate data approach was followed to reject the hypothesis that dynamics belongs to the colored noise type. Small earthquakes, below completeness threshold, were added to the analysis to check results robustness

Rayleigh-wave dispersion curve: a proxy for site effect estimation?

One of the open issues on the effects of surface geology regards the estimation of site response when limited resources are available. In that restrictive context, one solution is to use soil characteristics as proxy. Despite its extensive use, the most common proxy, Vs30, is presently criticized because it cannot carry alone the main physics of site response. We propose here a statistical investigation of the capabilities of another proxy, the Rayleigh-wave dispersion curve, DC. When considered over a broad enough frequency band, it can provide deeper information missing in the single Vs30 parameter. A set of shear-wave velocity profiles measured for more than 600 Japanese KiK-net stations is used to compute theoretical dispersion curves (DC) and theoretical SH transfer functions (SH), while instrumental surface/downhole spectral ratios were calculated in a previous work (Cadet et al., 2011a). Canonical correlation techniques are applied to this large data set to analyze the relationship between DC and theoretical or empirical site responses. The results indicate very encouraging qualitative statistical relationships between DC and site amplification for numerically derived SH transfer functions, showing significant canonical couples with correlations up to 0.95. Results for instrumental surface/downhole transfer functions correspond to lower correlations (up to 0.73) but still allow the development of quantitative relationships

Prediction Possibility in the Fractal Overlap Model of Earthquakes

The two-fractal overlap model of earthquake shows that the contact area distribution of two fractal surfaces follows power law decay in many cases and this agrees with the Guttenberg-Richter power law. Here, we attempt to predict the large events (earthquakes) in this model through the overlap time-series analysis. Taking only the Cantor sets, the overlap sizes (contact areas) are noted when one Cantor set moves over the other with uniform velocity. This gives a time series containing different overlap sizes. Our numerical study here shows that the cumulative overlap size grows almost linearly with time and when the overlapsizes are added up to a pre-assigned large event (earthquake) and then reset to `zero' level, the corresponding cumulative overlap sizes grows upto some discrete (quantised) levels. This observation should help to predict the possibility of `large events' in this (overlap) time series.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. To be published as proc. NATO conf. CMDS-10, Soresh, Israel, July 2003. Eds. D. J. Bergman & E. Inan, KLUWER PUB

Statistical estimation of earthquake site response from noise recordings

Standard spectral ratio from earthquake recordings (SSR) is considered the reference empirical method for assessing site effects as a function of frequency. However, other estimates can be easily obtained from noise measurements (i.e., Horizontal-to-Vertical Spectral Ratio, HVN), even though their reliability in terms of amplitude is controversial. In the framework of the ToK ITSAK-GR (2006-2010) EC project, Cultrera et al. (2010) analyzed recordings from 64 sites worldwide, founding that it is possible to have linear combinations of the HVN amplitudes significantly correlated to linear combinations of the SSR. In the present paper we show how to estimate the SSR spectral ratios when only noise measurements are available, using the results of the canonical correlation analysis between SSR and HVN recorded at several sites. The SSR evaluation has been tested by a cross validation procedure: the expected SSR at each validation site are in turn estimated by a weighted average of the SSR values measured at the other sites; the weights are properly set to account more for the sites with similar behavior in terms of the canonical correlation between HVN and SSR. To evaluate the goodness of the estimation, we compared all the inferred and original SSR, and we performed a critical analysis on the spectral characteristics of earthquake site response that can be easily recovered from noise measurements