A Wrapper to Use a Machine-Learning-Based Algorithm for Earthquake Monitoring

Abstract

AbstractSeismology is one of the main sciences used to monitor volcanic activity worldwide. Fast, efficient, and accurate seismicity detectors are crucial to assess the activity level of a volcano in near-real time and to issue timely warnings. Traditional real-time seismic processing software uses phase onset pickers followed by a phase association algorithm to declare an event and estimate its location. The pickers typically do not identify whether the detected phase is a P or S arrival, which can have a negative impact on hypocentral location quality and complicates phase association. We implemented the deep-neural-network-based method PhaseNet to identify in real time P and S seismic waves on data from one- and three-component seismometers. We tuned the Earthworm binder_ew associator module to use the phase identification from PhaseNet to detect and locate the events, which we archive in a SeisComP3 database. We assessed the performance of the algorithm by comparing the results with existing catalogs built to monitor seismic and volcanic activity in Mayotte and the Lesser Antilles region. Our algorithm, which we refer to as PhaseWorm, showed promising results in both contexts and clearly outperformed the previous automatic method implemented in Mayotte. This innovative real-time processing system is now operational for seismicity monitoring in Mayotte and Martinique.