Figure: Delegates from all over the world at EduCitiSeis2018 share information and experience of using different types of low-cost sensors. Some of them are deployed by professional, educational and citizen seismologists. (Image: reproduced with the permission of the British Geological Survey © UKRI. All rights reserved).

Main Results

EduCitiSeis2018 was claimed to be the world’s first international discussion workshop for educational and citizen seismology. The event, held in central London in February 2018, brought together 47 delegates from 18 countries supported by SERA and UNESCO. The meeting provided an opportunity to fulfil one of the objectives of SERA WP3; to develop integration between educational and citizen seismology projects. The workshop was designed to be an outward facing activity for the SERA group and a showcase to the world of the educational seismology activities taking place within Europe.

The workshop offered a unique opportunity for seismologists across a wide spectrum of fields including academia, schools, research institutes, equipment manufacturers, software developers and hobbyists. The workshop was truly participatory and therefore seen as unique and rewarding. Everyone had the opportunity to speak in the sessions and discuss the programme topics with other participants. This participatory approach was facilitated by every delegate having a two-minute “nano presentation” to introduce themselves and their work. Key delegates were empowered to lead parallel discussion sessions while a live voting app was used to decide on what issues to discuss and to vote on key questions. The discussions continued also during dinner: delegates rotated seats between courses so that they had a chance to meet and talk to everyone. EduCitiSeis2018 also served as a launchpad for the ESC2018 General Assembly sessions, S40 Seismology and Society and the 2019 IUGG 27th General Assembly, Innovation in Geoscience Education, Outreach and Citizen Science.

Figure: Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) – the European Infrastructure for open access to seismological waveform data

Main Results

OFREUS (Observatories & Research Facilities for European Seismology) is the European infrastructure for seismic waveform data, station metadata and products. Within ORFEUS, the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) is the federated infrastructure of seismological data archives that provides access to seismic waveform data from seismological networks. ORFEUS is the infrastructure for seismic waveform data in EPOS and provides access to high quality seismic waveforms and station metadata from EIDA and strong motion products. 

SERA fostered the collaboration and cooperation between seismological observatories and ORFEUS in regions like the Balkans and South-West Europe. The number of seismic stations providing data to the European seismological data infrastructure impressively increased from about 7'000 to over 11'000 during the SERA project, with an increase of nearly 100 stations in the Balkans. Currently, EIDA holds beyond 450 TB of data of 107 permanent networks and 190 temporary networks, with a total of more than 10'500 velocity sensors, over 1'600 accelerometers and about 160 infrasound sensors. Also, two new archives, representing seismic networks deployed by Norway and Catalunya, were added to EIDA.

Access to EIDA vastly improved during SERA through a) the implementation of standardized web services and formats across EIDA, b) the implementation of DOIs in metadata and c) the development and deployment of the Federator. Standardization of services and formats and the use of DOIs are in line with the FDSN (International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks). Current standard web services are: fdsnws-dataselect, fdsnws-station, eidaws-wfcatalog and eidaws-routing.

The development and implementation of the EIDA Federator provide a single, unified access point to the waveform archives and the station and quality control information from the entire EIDA data holdings, i.e. from all the datacenters in EIDA. Access is through standard FDSN and EIDA web services. The Federator enables transparent and homogeneous access to EIDA by users and clients (e.g. ObsPy, EIDA StationBook, RRSM (Rapid Raw Strong Motion database - the European system to expose strong motion products close to realtime for earthquake scientists and earthquake engineers).
EIDA aims at sustainable high quality of services by a) the establishment of a User Advisory Group within ORFEUS, b) a ticketing system for reporting issues and providing feedback to EIDA and c) the implementation of a new authentication system for restricted data (e.g. AlpArray). Data quality is provided by the eidaws_wfcatalog web service; however new tools are being developed and tested.

Within SERA a comprehensive overview of metadata for other geophysical measurements was made to prepare EIDA, although tailored for seismological waveform data, potentially ready to serve other types of time series data (e.g. Distributed Acoustic Sensing, Near Fault Observatories). Finally, SERA facilitated long-term sustainability of EIDA by building up extensive documentation, best practice guidelines for data acquisition and distribution, as well as technical support.

Figure: a) and b) total visits and total visits per region of data from the ICTJA-CSIC dataset; c and d) total downloads and total downloads per region of data from the same dataset (last access December 2019). USC: USA and Canada, EUR: Europe, CH: China, OTH: others or not defined, LA: Latin America, ASIA: Asia, JPN: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, AUS: Australia and New Zeeland, HK: Hong Kong, AFR: Africa

Main Results

The increased volume of scientific data since the last decades is enhancing a new plan to facilitate integrated use of open access data and data products. Tackling viable solutions for Solid Earth challenges, the European Plate Observation System project (EPOS) is a long-term plan to facilitate distributed research infrastructures in Europe. In particular, within EPOS, a Thematic Core Service in seismology aims to provide open access data of seismological products services. Among the different e-infrastructures, stands out SERA, which final aim is to spread the scientific knowledge of earthquake engineering and seismology data trying to make research data more accessible (DeFelipe et al., 2019a, b). The availability and accessibility of these data, therefore, is of foremost importance for the society, including scientists, decision-makers and the general public.

During its 50 years’ history, the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera (ICTJA-CSIC) has generated numerous data in the fields of geophysics, mineral geochemistry and volcanology among others. This work provides a review of the most important seismic campaigns and a comprehensive dataset of geophysical data acquired in the Iberian Peninsula since the 90’s, both onshore and offshore. The Iberian Peninsula has attracted the attention of international researchers in the fields of geology and geophysics for decades due to the exceptional outcrops of Alpine and Variscan mountain ranges, wide Cenozoic foreland basins, its offshore margins and its potential for natural resources. Our dataset was also acquired at very different scales, from continental/crustal scale to local/exploration scale in different geographical and geological settings. Therefore, we aim to make easily accessible old and recently acquired seismic data and, therefore, set the basis for the future campaigns of seismic data acquisition in order to create a FAIR dataset (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).

Our dataset is being increased since the last two years following the national and international mandates of open access data. In addition, the statistics based on total visits and downloads since its beginning show in general, an increased interest in the research carried out in the ICTJA-CSIC (Figure 1). According to these statistics, our dataset is being used more and more by users all around the world. Interestingly, our database is being visited mainly by users from USA and Canada, followed by European users and China being the third country in number of downloads of any of all the projects included in each dataset.

Figure: Roadmap for the integration of data banks and access services from the earthquake engineering (SERIES) and seismology (EPOS) research infrastructures.

Main Results

Roadmap for the integration of data banks and access services from the earthquake engineering (SERIES) and seismology (EPOS) research infrastructures proposes the integration of the SERIES databases in the existing EPOS service as a new Thematic Core Service (TCS) and exploring possible interoperability with other TCSs (e.g. Seismology) and with international partners. The first step is to consider the SERIES database as the first service of a new Earthquake Engineering Thematic Core Service (E/ENG TCS) within the EPOS architecture. SERIES will initially provide, through EPOS, integrated access to key data and experimental measures produced in Europe at some of the best facilities for earthquake engineering worldwide. In its mature phase, the integration process will provide an advanced interoperability within the earthquake engineering community itself, with the sibling TCS seismology and other TCSs, and with international partners. This objective will be guaranteed by means of the implementation of new services and tools for improving user accessibility and experience.

The roadmap identifies the cross-discipline needs in earthquake engineering and seismology data assessed through a questionnaire directed to users and stakeholders operating in the two fields. The questionnaire collected information on requirements and use cases for earthquake engineering and seismological data serving as the basis for the developed roadmap. The metadata structures in EPOS and SERIES were compared, followed by a gap analysis and leading to the requirements for the metadata catalogues development for the proposed new E/ENG TCS.

The roadmap puts forward a strategy with different tasks envisaged to be performed in three steps (short-, mid- and long-term). In the short-term, by the end of the SERA project, a pre-operational access service will be provided to selected SERIES datasets in order to allow validation of identified access technologies and involvement of the user community, for further implementation in EPOS. The activities performed in the mid-term will include a review of how the newly developed services and products will be fully compatible with the requirements of EPOS, at the technical, legal, governance and financial levels. Full integration of the earthquake engineering TCS in EPOS will be achieved in the long-term perspective by providing also access to research infrastructures, laboratories and data centres established outside Europe, thus improving the international dimension of EPOS.

Figure: Results of an international questionnaire: importance ranking (mandatory, recommended, optional) of site condition indicators that should be indicated in site characterization databases.

Main Results

Seismic site characterization of rock and soil properties has a large impact on earthquake ground motions and engineering seismology, especially for the evaluation of local site amplification, calibration of strong-motion records and realistic shaking estimates at seismic stations, site-specific hazard assessment, estimation of ground motion models, and soil classification for building code applications. However, there is not yet a common way to exchange site characterization information, whereas setting-up standard practices and quality assessment are becoming very important to reach high-level metadata. WP5 networking activity is leading to the definition of a European strategy and standards for site characterisation of seismic stations in Europe. Based on the results of an international online questionnaire, we defined a list of indicators considered as mandatory for a reliable site characterisation: fundamental resonance frequency, shear-wave velocity profile (Vs), time-averaged Vs over the first 30 m, depth of seismological and engineering bedrocks, surface geology, EC8 soil class. We proposed a summary report for each indicator, containing the most significant background information of data acquisition and processing details, and a quality metrics scheme. This requires the evaluation of both (i) reliability of the site characterization indicators provided by different methods, and (ii) consistency among the indicators according to the current knowledge of the scientific community.

In addition, we have investigated the applicability, at a wide scale, of broad site condition indicators or proxies to correlate with measured local seismic amplification based on an extensive database comprising more than 1'000 instrumented sites in Switzerland and Japan. Sensitivity of local amplification to the collected sets of site indicators highlight that proxies derived from in-situ geophysical measurements (f0, Vs30, etc.) perform better than parameters derived from local topography or geology. Furthermore, parameters derived from local geological models or databases generally show a stronger correlation with site amplification when compared to indicators from global models/databases. Prediction performance of various site condition parameter sets to predict frequency-dependent site amplification is assessed using neural networks. The most relevant direct proxy to predict local amplification over a wide frequency range is the quarter-wavelength parameter. Predictions based on VS30 only give satisfying results in intermediate frequency bands (1.67 – 6.66 Hz) while all direct site condition indicators except the quarter-wavelength parameters performs well in low and intermediate frequency bands (≤ 6.66 Hz). For indirect proxies (topography, geology, etc.), the prediction performance at all frequency bands shows best results when using all information that is available. This study also clearly outlines the importance of common geological classification from maps with different origins and scales.