Seismic Catalogue and Seismic Network in Haiti
Abstract
The destructive earthquake occurred on January 10, 2010 in Haiti, highlighted the lack of preparedness of the country to address seismic phenomena. At the moment of the earthquake, there was no seismic network operating in the country, and only a partial control of the past seismicity was possible, due to the absence of a national catalogue. After the 2010 earthquake, some advances began towards the installation of a national network and the elaboration of a seismic catalogue providing the necessary input for seismic Hazard Studies. This paper presents the state of the works carried out covering both aspects. First, a seismic catalogue has been built, compiling data of historical and instrumental events occurred in the Hispaniola Island and surroundings, in the frame of the SISMO-HAITI project, supported by the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Developed in cooperation with the Observatoire National de l'Environnement et de la Vulnérabilité of Haiti (ONEV). Data from different agencies all over the world were gathered, being relevant the role of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico seismological services which provides local data of their national networks. Almost 30000 events recorded in the area from 1551 till 2011 were compiled in a first catalogue, among them 7700 events with Mw ranges between 4.0 and 8.3. Since different magnitude scale were given by the different agencies (Ms, mb, MD, ML), this first catalogue was affected by important heterogeneity in the size parameter. Then it was homogenized to moment magnitude Mw using the empirical equations developed by Bonzoni et al (2011) for the eastern Caribbean. At present, this is the most exhaustive catalogue of the country, although it is difficult to assess its degree of completeness. Regarding the seismic network, 3 stations were installed just after the 2010 earthquake by the Canadian Government. The data were sent by telemetry thought the Canadian System CARINA. In 2012, the Spanish IGN together with ONEV and BME, installed 4 seismic stations with financial support from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Haitian Government. The 4 stations include strong motion and broad-band sensors, complementing the 8 sensors initially installed. The stations communicate via SATMEX5 with the Canadian HUB, which sends the data back to Haiti with minimum delay. In the immediate future, data transfer will be improved with the installation of a main antenna for data reception and the Seismic Warning Center of Port-au-Prince. A bidirectional satellite communication is considered of fundamental importance for robust real-time data transmission that is not affected in the case of a catastrophic event.
- Publication:
-
AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUSM.S52A..07B
- Keywords:
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- 7294 SEISMOLOGY / Seismic instruments and networks;
- 7200 SEISMOLOGY;
- 7223 SEISMOLOGY / Earthquake interaction;
- forecasting;
- and prediction;
- 7255 SEISMOLOGY / Surface waves and free oscillations