The Iranian Seismological Center’s Performance during the COVID-19 Pandemic and after the Occurrence of Large Earthquakes

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing global health emergency that has overshadowed almost all aspects of human life in most of the world. The seismic monitoring centers are a crucial component of the earthquake crisis management, and continuity of their operations during different crises is critical. Occurrence of any unusual condition (such as COVID-19 crisis) could result in failures in detecting seismic events. This article aims to share the experiences at the Iranian Seismological Center (IRSC) in 2020 during the first months of the COVID-19 epidemic: how the monitoring changed in comparison with the routine surveillance system. One of the main impacts of the pandemic was loss of active stations due to a halt in routine maintenance visits to the seismic stations. The restrictions imposed by the government to contain the virus resulted in loss of 8% of the stations of IRSC network. We analyze how seismic noise changed during the lockdown. The results show that unlike many other places in the world, Iran did not see a seismic noise reduction during the lockdowns from the pandemic. In addition, we describe the response of IRSC following large earthquakes. The increase in workload after big earthquakes is discussed and some lessons from these crises are shared. The need to update seismic monitoring software to allow for some automatic processing and to carefully revise the processing routines to balance the workload during large earthquakes is discussed. Also, re-evaluation of seismic station locations for better maintenance access could lead to fewer problems at the time of crisis like the current pandemic.