A real-time AI-assisted seismic monitoring system based on new nodal stations with 4G telemetry and its application in the Yangbi MS 6.4 aftershock monitoring in southwest China

Abstract

A rapidly deployable dense seismic monitoring system which is capable of transmitting acquired data in real time and analyzing data automatically is crucial in seismic hazard mitigation after a major earthquake. However, it is rather difficult for current seismic nodal stations to transmit data in real time for an extended period of time, and it usually takes a great amount of time to process the acquired data manually. To monitor earthquakes in real time flexibly, we develop a mobile integrated seismic monitoring system consisting of newly developed nodal units with 4G telemetry and a real-time AI-assisted automatic data processing workflow. The integrated system is convenient for deployment and has been successfully applied in monitoring the aftershocks of the Yangbi MS 6.4 earthquake occurred on May 21, 2021 in Yangbi County, Dali City, Yunnan in southwest China. The acquired seismic data are transmitted almost in real time through the 4G cellular network, and then processed automatically for event detection, positioning, magnitude calculation and source mechanism inversion. From tens of seconds to a couple of minutes at most, the final seismic attributes can be presented remotely to the end users through the integrated system. From May 27 to June 17, the real-time system has detected and located 7 905 aftershocks in the Yangbi area before the internal batteries exhausted, far more than the catalog provided by China Earthquake Networks Center using the regional permanent stations. The initial application of this integrated real-time monitoring system is promising, and we anticipate the advent of a new era for Real-time Intelligent Array Seismology (RIAS), for better monitoring and understanding the subsurface dynamic processes caused by Earth's internal forces as well as anthropogenic activities.