PSN-L Email List Message

Subject: Re: Standards use can follow
From: "sismos@............... sismos@volcanbaru.com
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:16:51 +0000


Hi Barry,


On 07/27/2012 12:50 PM, Barry Lotz wrote:
> Couple of quick thoughts:
> -"PSN" sounds like a good network name.
Network codes can only be two letters and are assigned.  I will get one 
for us.

> -It might be a goal to have a network output display like LISS does 
> with the GSN stations. I think a number of us have real time plots on 
> our websites and Larry's site. I seems better if they were together 
> some how. I noticed the LISS display all use the same display 
> amplification. This might  to be difficult with different sensor 
> types. We might have group the sensors by frequency response. Broad 
> band is my interest but not not necessarily others.
This would be quite easy once we have our date in an earthworm, which I 
will help happen.

This is the way earthworm does it

http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/heli/heli_bb_ceri/


I will work on getting us a network and earthworm ID's

Saludos,


Angel


> - Eventually, maybe by clicking on the network heliplot there would be 
> a link to the sensor and station specifics. See:
> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring/operations/heliplots_gsn.php
>
> - I am not familiar enough with the software packages that Branden 
> mentioned. I have to do my research. Sounds like they would work to 
> group our stations.
>
> Regards
> Barry
> www.seismicvault.com 
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Stephen Hammond 
> *To:* psnlist@..............
> *Sent:* Thu, July 26, 2012 10:44:04 PM
> *Subject:* RE: Standards use can follow
>
> Hi all, my 2c worth. I have been following this thread to see where it 
> went for a few weeks. This topic is also one of my hot button items. 
>  I first want to say, Branden and Berry, your comments are excellent 
> and show a considerable amount of insight. There was a comment in the 
> thread about the PSN stations not being creditable and I have to 
> disagree. I respect IRIS and the USGS and all you need to do is search 
> ”PSN” on the IRIS site 
> http://www.iris.edu/hq/search?cx=011835713541211780569%3Aw8gihycyx-y&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=psn&x=32&y=6 
>  and you will see that the PSN format developed with inputs from Ted 
> Blank, Larry, John Lahr, Ed Cranswick and others is recognized, 
> compatible and supported. Please keep in mind that one of the more 
> important factors in the PSN stations is that fact that we install 
> sensors where the people live. Not up on top of a hill but right down 
> in the valley mud. That sets us apart and makes many of our 
> installation unique. As station operators we see site response changes 
> that do not get noted by any of those  uphill sites. If you operate 
> one of these unique systems you know that there will be site response 
> changes with the first real rain following the long dry summer heat. 
> When the PSN San Jose station was located in the San Jose south valley 
> the light rail provided a wonderful consistent source. Many of us see 
> the noise generated from buses, trucks and other domestic sources and 
> can gage the operational status of our installations. In the deep mud 
> in the south valley in San Jose there would be a dramatic shift in the 
> site response with the first miserable amount of rain. This is one 
> area the armature seismologist can contribute to the body of 
> knowledge. Another area is the many remote stations that have been 
> installed in the PSN network around the world. Data from these 
> stations is most likely the first seismic data ever recorded and 
> placed into the public domain. It is important to remember that in 
> 1995 we were asked to provide codified station names, locations and 
> sensor information so that we could contribute to the world-wide 
> seismic station list which we did. Those lists are still maintained in 
> the Iris archives. If you look at 
> http://www.sydneystormcity.com/map.htm you will also see a station 
> listing that has been in place for a number of years.
>
> I would suggest that if  we want to move forward we form working 
> groups to address some of the issue:
>
> 1.Calibration.
>
> 2.Consistent amplifier filtering and gain settings.
>
> 3.A complete world-wide listing of stations including sensor type, 
> location, amp gain, operators info, data exchange format, install 
> dates, related website address, data website storage address and any 
> special information.
>
> 4.Site self evaluations standards. An example would be the PSN San 
> Jose site located in Aptos, CA. ATE, ATN and ATZ on a scale of 
> 1-5(high) I would rate a 3. They are HS-10 geophones with a gain of 
> 2,100, 50 sample/sec, timing is via GPS using Larry’s data collection 
> system. The exact location is 36.58.41.700N / 121.53.55.824W at an alt 
> of +39.53m. What is lacking on these three sensors is that I cannot 
> tell you when I ran the last calibration test on these geophones. If 
> you were to ask me about the AT1 and AT2E long period sensors I would 
> rate them at a 1 as they are both considered to be experimental and I 
> would tell you to treat the data accordingly.
>
> My thoughts, Regards Steve Hammond PSN San Jose, Aptos CA.
>
> *From:*psnlist-request@.............. 
> [mailto:psnlist-request@............... *On Behalf Of *Branden Christensen
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:04 PM
> *To:* psnlist@..............
> *Subject:* Re: Standards use can follow
>
> Barry:
>
> Angel's partner here. I generally do not weigh in on these discussions 
> but you are hitting on an area of seismology I am passionate about: 
> metadata.
>
> Fortunately, much of what you so keenly propose already exists. Take 
> the two biggest registries for example: IRIS amd GFZ. In recent times 
> a few industry standards have emerged:
>
> Data Exchange Protocol: SeedLink
> Waveform Protocol: MiniSeed
> Metadata protocol: Dataless Seed
>
> Together the miniseed and dataless create a complete Seed volume. 
> MiniSeed files contain waveform data and a header to identify the 
> Station Network Channel Location or SCNL, etc. The dataless is really 
> amazing. It contains the station SCNL, lat lon alt depth, description, 
> serial numbers, sensor and digitizer flavor, acquisition start and end 
> dates/ times and the full response information: poles, zeros and gain- 
> or exactly the required information to construct the systems transfer 
> function and remove the instrument response. Most real time software 
> packages such as Earthworm, Earlybird and SeisComP and post processing 
> systems such as Seisan automatically use this dataless information to 
> remove the instrument response. This permits the software to produce 
> magnitudes and event locations or stuff sensative to the real 
> amplitudes and phase of the input signal.
>
> All of this seed information is passed around via SeedLink Servers in 
> real time.
>
> If you are thinking of how the amateur community might contribute, 
> then Angel made a good point about the need for detecting local 
> seismicity below 4. But also consider the civil defense applications 
> of seismology. Magnitude and locations are really an academic pursuit- 
> pretty much meaningless to the general public who want to know 1) did 
> it shake and, if so, 2) how much. So lots and lots of amateur neural 
> networks of accelerometers could make a difference. Imagine piping all 
> of that data into a real time system that created shake maps with 
> color intensities displaying how hard the ground shook and where. 
> These maps benefit from lots and lots of nodes, be they amateur or 
> professional.
>
> Great thread, keep it coming.
>
> Best,
>
> Branden Christensen
>
> On Jul 26, 2012 8:11 PM, "Barry Lotz"  > wrote:
>
> Hi Angel
> Thank you. The links you listed shed light on the USGS station name I 
> have been monitoring. Should the network have some significance in the 
> name? Does "WE" refer to something? Maybe the network registry could 
> eventually contain the station's sensor specifics. Maybe a some of 
> these station properties could be listed which would show organization 
> , professionalism, &  completeness. Maybe some items might be:
> - type of sensor ( feedback or not? , homemade? , mfg new?, mfg 
> restored  or modified?)
>
> - calibrated or not
> - method of timing
> - if calibrated, is there a frequency response plot available.
> - some kind of  station noise quality. Sensor noise is a subject in 
> it's self, but maybe a combined noise plot or related value could be 
> determined which would the combined site/sensor noise, which is 
> ultimately what affects the sensors output. Maybe something comparing 
> the station sensor to the NLNM or NHNM. It probably should be similar 
> to how the professional  stations are evaluated.
> - availability of digital data?
> - ?
> Just some thoughts to keep the thread live.
>
> Regards
> Barry
> _www.seismicvault.com _
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*"sismos@.............. " 
> >
> *To:* psnlist@.............. 
> *Sent:* Wed, July 25, 2012 6:03:49 AM
> *Subject:* Standards use can follow
>
> HI Barry,
>
> I might have to take this in parts.  I think that there are some very 
> easy steps we can take that cost nothing.  We can follow the channel 
> naming convention.
>
> All of the modern softwares and mainly earthworm and seiscomp refer to 
> channels as SCNL
>
> Station
> Channel
> Network
> Location
>
> STATION  name can be up to 5 characters, letters and numbers, no 
> special characters and can not start with a number. My main station 
> for the last 12 years is BRU2.  If the station name are to be shared 
> the need to be unique.  There is an agency that keeps a big station 
> book.  We could probably come up with a scheme that was unique to us, 
> for example all or our station names would end in 99  so maybe a new 
> site for me would be ALR99.
>
> CHANNEL name is a bit harder but but more or less defined here.
>
> http://www.iris.washington.edu/manuals/SEED_appA.htm
>
> NETWORK code we would have to apply for one, if we haven't, I could do 
> it, it would be easy, They are assigned by the FDSN, Federation of 
> Digital Seismic Network.  We might ask for one, maybe "WE", as far as 
> I can tell numbers are allow in this field, so maybe we could get a 
> pair of numbers.
>
> http://www.fdsn.org/station_book/
>
> LOCATION is just a two character field, numbers and letter. Normally 
> 00 for the main station.  The usefulness is that if we have many 
> instruments co-located we can tell them apart.  Dave has many vertical 
> at the same place so they would all have the same station name, the 
> same channel name and the same network code and we could tell them 
> apart by the location code. So...
>
> My main station has SCNLs as follow
>
> BRU2 HHZ PA 00
> BRU2 HHN PA 00
> BRU2 HHE PA 00
>
> Dave's might be
>
> DFN99 HHZ WE 00
> DFN99 HHZ WE 10
> DFN99 HHZ WE 20
>
> This would be the SCNL for three co-located vertical high gain 
> broadbands from the station DFN99 sampled at more than 80 samples per 
> second in the network WE.
>
> Other easy things we can do is to have our station coordinates
> Then the time thing, GPS is best but WWV if fine and cheap and there 
> is NTP network time which I also think is ok as long as we can 
> regulate the computer time to less than 100 milliseconds for regional 
> locations. Small tight networks need better time.
>
> Many latin american country networks have nothing more, They only pick 
> P and S report coda magnitudes.  You do not need to calibrate your 
> instruments to do that.  To calculate other magnitudes we would need 
> to calibrate our instruments.
>
> Most of use have Larry's digitizer which easily integrates into 
> earthworm and once we had our data in earthworm sharing our data in 
> real time would be easy.  We would need an earthworm ID but that would 
> be easy and we could all share the same ID.
>
> More latter, questions and comments welcome.  Who wants to be our 
> registrar??
>
> Saludos,
>
> Angel
>
>
>
>
> On 07/17/2012 02:19 AM, Barry Lotz wrote:
> > Angel & Dave
> >  I agree. How do we move forward?
> > My 2 cents:  I work for a structural testing and inspection lab. Our 
> lab and inspectors comply with certain standards so that our 
> results/inspections are credible ( eg NIST, ASTM, AWS, ICC). Maybe it 
> would be possible to have an accepted protocol for our stations with 
> sensor(s). I would like to comment on  the items you mentioned.
> > >"We have noisy instruments"
> >    It seems possible to determine the instrument noise by maybe 
> "nesting"? Site noise could be evaluated over "X" time during 
> day,night or both. Could it mirror the evaluation of professional 
> systems? It seems a  threshold could be determined for credibility 
> station/sensor noise limits. Do we use the NLNM graph with an envelope 
> of limits?
> > >"We do not calibrate"
> >    Could a accepted standardized procedure be described for 
> horizontal and vertical sensors, that all could use? I am familiar 
> with methods that Dave and Brett use for our FBV's.
> > >"We do not have accurate time"
> >    Would , as an example, larry's SDR program and ADC unit with GPS 
> time be sufficient? What would be an accepted variational allowance?
> > >"We do not use a standard format for data exchange"
> >      Could a documented conversion program(s) be used to convert 
> from say psn to an "standard" format? Maybe it already exists.
> > > "We do not use standard naming conventions"
> >      Should we have a described procedure for this?
> > I think Dr Weilandt has programs which could address some of the 
> noise and calibration issues above. I haven't completely read it but 
> is the NMSOP what professionals use? Could we have something similar 
> with more nuts and bolts procedures and info?
> >      General agreement maybe the biggest hurdle, but I agree we 
> should make an effort to have more credible stations and sensors if we 
> desire. Maybe we just needs some agreed upon documented standards to 
> try to achieve.
> >
> > Regards
> > Barry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *From:* "sismos@.............. " 
> >
> > *To:* psnlist@.............. 
> > *Sent:* Sat, July 14, 2012 12:48:51 PM
> > *Subject:* Re: diamagnetic levitation seismometer possibility
> >
> > On 07/14/2012 12:38 AM, Thomas Dick wrote:
> > > On 7/13/2012 5:55 PM, Dave Nelson wrote:
> > >> The number of possible seismic instrument configurations which 
> will provide some response  to seismic motions is vast. The question 
> is the practicality/utility of a given configuration.
> > >> The key figure of merit for any instrument configuration  is the 
> instrument self noise and response as a function of frequency. This 
> directly determines the minimum seismic motion the instrument is 
> capable of detecting and then providing useful data for analysis.
> > >> If one is willing to wait for that rare magnitude 7 or 8 event 
> the simplest / noisiest instrument may do the job in some contexts, 
> such as classroom demonstrations .
> > >> The amateur astronomer community has evolved to the point where 
> it provides useful  ( if not essential) information to the astronomy 
> scientific community. I believe the amateur seismology community could 
> do a similar service but not with inadequate instrumentation.
> > >>  The goal should be to develop amateur instruments with 
> characteristics near the performance of professional instruments and 
> then operating  them in reasonably low noise sites. (An instrument in 
> a residential basement  will work reassembly well if carefully done.)
> > >> Larry Cochrane has  already provided us with excellent equipment 
> to handle the sensor data and connect it to a network. Some work needs 
> to be done in this area but we have a good start.
> > >> _*My challenge is to include instrument self noise and generator 
> constant, both as a function of frequency, as a FIRST PRIORITY when 
> evaluating the utility of an instrument concept. *_
> > >> Just another gadget that will respond if you shake it is not 
> where we want to spend our efforts and resources.
> > >> I do  NOT  mean to imply there are not some truly innovative and 
> possibly revolutionary ideas out there but we should  look at each of 
> them  carefully to determine early whether they justify significant 
> effort or belong in the "that was interesting" stack.
> > >> Just where determination is made is a personal choice but it 
> should be based on some form of analysis and/or test.
> > >> Comments Please.
> > >> Dave Nelson
> > >> Rolling Hills Estates, California
> > > My impression is that most academia and professional seismologists 
> hold the amateur in very low esteem.
> >
> > Yes, they do hold us in low esteem and this is our own fault.
> >
> > We have noisy instruments
> > We do not calibrate
> > We do not have accurate time
> > We do not use a standard format for data exchange
> > We do not use standard naming conventions
> >
> > The academic and professional seismologists can already locate and 
> characterize (within a few minutes) all events over about 4.2 Mb, They 
> don't need us for that.  Where we could excel and make a meaningful 
> contribution is in the seismicity of our own backyards, the small 
> events less than one degree from our instruments. Recording those is a 
> bit harder than picking up the squiggles from a 6.5 Mb 10 degrees away.
> >
> > These are just a few things we do and do not do and until we do we 
> will just be amateurs.
> >
> > Just my two cents
> >
> > Angel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________________
> >
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