[1] We investigate the rupture process of a sequence of repeating Mw 2.1 earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault in Parkfield spanning the occurrence of the September 28, 2004 mainshock by inverting seismic moment rate functions obtained from empirical Green's function deconvolution. The results show that these events have extremely concentrated slip patches with radii on the order of 10-20 m, with peak slip between 8.4 and 11.4 cm. The rupture speed and rise time are consistent with values of larger earthquakes. The spatial distribution of stress drop for the events shows low average values 2.5 -5.6 MPa and very large peak values of 66.7 -93.9 MPa. The results show that strong asperities can exist at small scales on an otherwise weak fault, and helps reconcile differences between traditional spectra-based and tectonic loading methods for determining the stress drop of small repeating earthquakes.

No abstract

Description of typical Class-C MEMS accelerometers; example of Excel analysis sheet; table summaries of box-flip test results, sensor performance, and pricing information.

The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system is designed to automatically identify and characterize the initiation and rupture evolution of large earthquakes, estimate the intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver alerts to people and systems that may experience shaking, prior to the occurrence of shaking at their location. It is configured to issue alerts to locations within the West Coast of the United States. In 2018, ShakeAlert 2.0 went live in a regional public test in the first phase of a general public rollout. The ShakeAlert system is now providing alerts to more than 60 institutional partners in the three states of the western United States where most of the nation’s earthquake risk is concentrated: California, Oregon, and Washington. The ShakeAlert 2.0 product for public alerting is a message containing a polygon enclosing a region predicted to experience modified Mercalli intensity (MMI) threshold levels that depend on the delivery method. Wireless Emergency Alerts are delivered for M 5+ earthquakes with expected shaking of MMI≥IV. For cell phone apps, the thresholds are M 4.5+ and MMI≥III. A polygon format alert is the easiest description for selective rebroadcasting mechanisms (e.g., cell towers) and is a requirement for some mass notification systems such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. ShakeAlert 2.0 was tested using historic waveform data consisting of 60 M 3.5+ and 25 M 5.0+ earthquakes, in addition to other anomalous waveforms such as calibration signals. For the historic event test, the average M 5+ false alert and missed event rates for ShakeAlert 2.0 are 8% and 16%. The M 3.5+ false alert and missed event rates are 10% and 36.7%. Real-time performance metrics are also presented to assess how the system behaves in regions that are well-instrumented, sparsely instrumented, and for offshore earthquakes.

Increased monitoring of civil structures for response to earthquake motions is fundamental to reducing seismic risk. Seismic monitoring is difficult because typically only a few useful, intermediate to large earthquakes occur per decade near instrumented structures. Here, we demonstrate that the impulse response function (IRF) of a multistory building can be generated from ambient noise. Estimated shearwave velocity, attenuation values, and resonance frequencies from the IRF agree with previous estimates for the instrumented University of California, Los Angeles, Factor building. The accuracy of the approach is demonstrated by predicting the Factor building's response to an M 4.2 earthquake. The methodology described here allows for rapid, noninvasive determination of structural parameters from the IRFs within days and could be used for state-of-health monitoring of civil structures (buildings, bridges, etc.) before and/or after major earthquakes.

The University of California Berkeley's (UCB) Earthquake Alert Systems (ElarmS) is a network-based earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm that was one of the original algorithms developed for the U.S. west-coast-wide ShakeAlert EEW system. Here, we describe the latest update to the algorithm, ElarmS v.3.0 (ElarmS-3 or E3). A new teleseismic filter has been developed for E3 that analyzes the frequency content of incoming signals to better differentiate between teleseismic and local earthquakes. A series of trigger filters, including amplitude-based checks and a horizontal-to-vertical ratio check, have also been added to E3 to improve the quality of triggers that are used to create events. Because of its excellent performance, E3 is now the basis for EPIC, the only ShakeAlert point-source algorithm going forward. We can therefore also use the performance of E3 described here to assess the likely performance of ShakeAlert in the coming public rollout. We should expect false events with magnitudes between M 5 and 6 less than once per year. False events with M ≥ 6 will be even less frequent, with none having been observed in testing. We do not expect to miss any M ≥ 6 onshore earthquakes, though the system may miss some large offshore events and may miss one onshore earthquake between M 5 and 6 per year. Finally, in the metropolitan regions where the station density is on the order of 10 km, we expect users 20, 30, and 40 km from an earthquake epicenter to get 3, 6, and 9 s warning, respectively, before the S-wave shaking begins. Electronic Supplement: Screenshot of the Earthquake Alert Systems (ElarmS) review tool, and example histograms and tables of algorithm performance created by the review tool.

No abstract

During July 2019, a sequence of earthquakes, including an Mw 6.4 foreshock and an Mw 7.1 mainshock, occurred near Ridgecrest, California. ShakeAlert, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake early warning system being developed for the U.S. West Coast, was operational during this time, although public alerting was only available within Los Angeles County. ShakeAlert created alert messages for the two largest events and for many of the larger aftershocks. In this study, we dissect log files and replay data through the system to reconstruct the sequence of events and analyze the performance of the system during that period. Although the system performed reasonably well overall, the sequence also revealed various issues and short comings that will be addressed in impending and future system upgrades. ShakeAlert detected and characterized both the Mw 6.4 and Mw 7.1 earthquakes within 6.9 s of their origin times and created alert messages that were available to ShakeAlert’s pilot users. No public alerts were sent out by the ShakeAlertLA cell phone app (the only publicly available alerting method at the time), because the predicted shaking for Los Angeles County was below the app’s alerting threshold of modified Mercalli intensity 4.0. For the Mw 6.4 event, this was accurate. For the Mw 7.1 event, public alerts for Los Angeles County were warranted, but ShakeAlert underpredicted the shaking levels, because both the point-source and finite-fault algorithms underestimated the magnitude of the earthquake by 0.8 units. A number of software and hardware issues that were responsible for the magnitude underestimation of the mainshock have been identified and will be addressed in future ShakeAlert releases. We also analyze the hypothetical alerting performance of ShakeAlert had public alerting been available throughout southern California.