Performance and Next-Generation Development of the Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) within the United States West Coast ShakeAlert Warning System

Abstract

ABSTRACTRapid fault rupture information is important to estimate seismic ground motions and damage in large earthquakes, and is, therefore, of great value for earthquake early warning (EEW) and rapid response. The Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer) algorithm computes earthquake line-source models by comparing spatial distributions of high-frequency seismic amplitudes with precomputed template maps. FinDer is one of two seismic EEW algorithms currently adopted by the United States West Coast ShakeAlert EEW system. Between March 2018 and October 2022, FinDer detected 1048 earthquakes (2.3 ≤ M ≤ 7.1) inside the FinDer-reporting region in California, Oregon, and Washington with a median detection time of 8.5 s (75th and 95th percentile: 11.5 s, 38.9 s) after event origin and median errors (first report) of 6.7 km (75th and 95th percentile: 10.5 km, 25.5 km) in location, −0.45 s (mean ± st. dev.: 0.1 ± 5.9 s) in origin time, and 0.33 units (mean ± st. dev.: 0.33 ± 0.31 m.u.) in magnitude. Ground motions estimated using FinDer source parameters are in excellent agreement with observed peak ground accelerations, and residuals are, on average, 30% smaller than if predicted from catalog source parameters. This suggests that FinDer’s simple source parameter terms are accounting for more complex high-frequency source characteristics. This article summarizes the performance of FinDer in ShakeAlert and describes the recent improvements to the algorithm addressing issues encountered during real-time operation. This includes the handling of latent seismic data, robust event detection in regions with sparse instrumentation, enabling faster magnitude convergence in large earthquakes, use of fault- and scenario-specific earthquakes (e.g., along the Cascadia subduction zone or San Andreas fault), as well as increased robustness of FinDer in complex earthquake sequences. We demonstrate the performance of the new FinDer version 3 algorithm using waveform playbacks of selected events along the U.S. West Coast, Japan, and China, including both historic and synthetic earthquakes.