The Red Atrapa Sismos (Quake-Catcher Network in Mexico): Assessing Performance during Large and Damaging Earthquakes

Abstract

The Quake‐Catcher Network (QCN) is an expanding seismic array made possible by thousands of participants who volunteered time and resources from their computers to record seismic data using low‐cost accelerometers (http://qcn.stanford.edu/; last accessed December 2014). Sensors based on Micro‐Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) technology have rapidly improved over the last few years due to the demand of the private sector (e.g., automobiles, cell phones, and laptops). For strong‐motion applications, low‐cost MEMS accelerometers have promising features due to an increasing resolution and near‐linear phase and amplitude response (Cochran, Lawrence, Christensen, and Jakka, 2009; Clayton et al., 2011; Evans et al., 2014). Each volunteer computer monitors ground motion and communicates using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, Anderson, 2004). Using a standard short‐term average, long‐term average (STLA) algorithm (Earle and Shearer, 1994; Cochran, Lawrence, Christensen, Chung, 2009; Cochran, Lawrence, Christensen, and Jakka, 2009), volunteer computer and sensor systems detect abrupt changes in the acceleration recordings. Each time a possible trigger signal is declared, a small package of information containing sensor and ground‐motion information is streamed to one of the QCN servers (Chung et al., 2011). Trigger signals, correlated in space and time, are then processed by the QCN server to look for potential earthquakes.

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