Publications Details

Performance estimates of the CD proposed international seismic monitoring system

Claassen, J.P.

An enhanced version of NetSim and an expanded supporting database were used to predict the detection and location performances of the International Seismic Monitoring System (ISMS) proposed in Working Paper 330 by the Ad Hoc Committee on a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty who supported the Conference on Disarmament in formulating the system monitoring requirements. The primary goals of this effort were to estimate the levels of 9 performance of the proposed ISMS and to predict the enhancements in location accuracy as would be provided by station and regional calibrations. An estimate of the detection threshold indicates that the primary network alone and in its mature state is capable of detecting a fully coupled 1 kiloton nuclear shot contained in consolidated rock anywhere on the earth. Further, the best detection thresholds appear in central Eurasia and range from 3.25 to 3.5 magnitude units. The threshold estimates were based on a 3P at 99% network detection criterion. Location performance estimates indicated that conventional location methods using regional and station calibrations are capable of achieving location accuracies better than 1000 square kilometers with 90% confidence largely everywhere for events with magnitudes at or above the detection threshold of the primary network. The poorest accuracies primarily appear on islands in the southern oceans and in portions of Antarctica. For events having a magnitude of 4.25 the location accuracy exceeds 100 square kilometers in almost the entire northern hemisphere, over a large portion of Africa, and a small portion of South America. Better accuracies than these are possible at larger event magnitudes. Regional and station calibrations yield net reductions in the elliptical areas of uncertainty by factors better than 6.0 using conventional location methods.