TY - JOUR A1 - Hammer, Conny A1 - Fäh, Donat A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias T1 - Automatic detection of wet-snow avalanche seismic signals JF - Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards N2 - Avalanche activity is an important factor when estimating the regional avalanche danger. Moreover, a complete and detailed picture of avalanche activity is needed to understand the processes that lead to natural avalanche release. Currently, information on avalanche activity is mainly obtained through visual observations. However, this involves large uncertainties in the number and release times, influencing the subsequent analysis. Therefore, alternative methods for the remote detection of snow avalanches in particular in non-observed areas are highly desirable. In this study, we use the excited ground vibration to identify avalanches automatically. The specific seismic signature of avalanches facilitates the objective detection by a recently developed classification procedure. A probabilistic description of the signals, called hidden Markov models, allows the robust identification of corresponding signals in the continuous data stream. The procedure is based upon learning a general background model from continuous seismic data. Then, a single reference waveform is used to update an event-specific classifier. Thus, a minimum amount of training data is required by constructing such a classifier on the fly. In this study, we processed five days of continuous data recorded in the Swiss Alps during the avalanche winter 1999. With the restriction of testing large wet-snow avalanches only, the presented approach achieved very convincing results. We successfully detect avalanches over a large volume and distance range. Ninety-two percentage of all detections (43 out of 47) could be confirmed as avalanche events; only four false alarms are reported. We see a clear dependence of recognition capability on run-out distance and source-receiver distance of the observed events: Avalanches are detectable up to a source-receiver distance of eight times the avalanche length. Implications for analyzing a more comprehensive data set (smaller events and different flow regimes) are discussed in detail. KW - Snow avalanche recognition KW - Automatic detection KW - Avalanche forecasting KW - Hidden Markov model Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2707-0 SN - 0921-030X SN - 1573-0840 VL - 86 SP - 601 EP - 618 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foti, Sebastiano A1 - Hollender, Fabrice A1 - Garofalo, Flora A1 - Albarello, Dario A1 - Asten, Michael A1 - Bard, Pierre-Yves A1 - Comina, Cesare A1 - Cornou, Cecile A1 - Cox, Brady A1 - Di Giulio, Giuseppe A1 - Forbriger, Thomas A1 - Hayashi, Koichi A1 - Lunedei, Enrico A1 - Martin, Antony A1 - Mercerat, Diego A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Poggi, Valerio A1 - Renalier, Florence A1 - Sicilia, Deborah A1 - Socco, Valentina T1 - Guidelines for the good practice of surface wave analysis BT - a product of the InterPACIFIC project JF - Bulletin of earthquake engineering : official publication of the European Association for Earthquake Engineering N2 - Surface wave methods gained in the past decades a primary role in many seismic projects. Specifically, they are often used to retrieve a 1D shear wave velocity model or to estimate the V-s,V-30 at a site. The complexity of the interpretation process and the variety of possible approaches to surface wave analysis make it very hard to set a fixed standard to assure quality and reliability of the results. The present guidelines provide practical information on the acquisition and analysis of surface wave data by giving some basic principles and specific suggestions related to the most common situations. They are primarily targeted to non-expert users approaching surface wave testing, but can be useful to specialists in the field as a general reference. The guidelines are based on the experience gained within the InterPACIFIC project and on the expertise of the participants in acquisition and analysis of surface wave data. KW - Rayleigh waves KW - MASW KW - Ambient vibration analysis KW - Site characterization KW - Shear wave velocity KW - V-S,V-30 Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-017-0206-7 SN - 1570-761X SN - 1573-1456 VL - 16 IS - 6 SP - 2367 EP - 2420 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wathelet, Marc A1 - Guillier, B. A1 - Roux, P. A1 - Cornou, C. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias T1 - Rayleigh wave three-component beamforming BT - signed ellipticity assessment from high-resolution frequency-wavenumber processing of ambient vibration arrays JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - The variation of Rayleigh ellipticity versus frequency is gaining popularity in site characterization. It becomes a necessary observable to complement dispersion curves when inverting shear wave velocity profiles. Various methods have been proposed so far to extract polarization from ambient vibrations recorded on a single three-component station or with an array of three-component sensors. If only absolute values were recovered 10 yr ago, new array-based techniques were recently proposed with enhanced efficiencies providing also the ellipticity sign. With array processing, higher-order modes are often detected even in the ellipticity domain. We suggest to explore the properties of a high-resolution beamforming where radial and vertical components are explicitly included. If N is the number of three-component sensors, 2N x 2N cross-spectral density matrices are calculated for all presumed directions of propagation. They are built with N radial and N vertical channels. As a first approach, steering vectors are designed to fit with Rayleigh wave properties: the phase shift between radial and vertical components is either -Pi/2 or Pi/2. We show that neglecting the ellipticity tilt due to attenuation has only minor effects on the results. Additionally, we prove analytically that it is possible to retrieve the ellipticity value from the usual maximization of the high-resolution beam power. The method is tested on synthetic data sets and on experimental data. Both are reference sites already analysed by several authors. A detailed comparison with previous results on these cases is provided. KW - Fourier analysis KW - Time-series analysis KW - Site effects KW - Surface waves and free oscillations KW - Wave propagation Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggy286 SN - 0956-540X SN - 1365-246X VL - 215 IS - 1 SP - 507 EP - 523 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haendel, Annabel A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Krüger, Frank T1 - Frequency-dependent quality factors from the deconvolution of ambient noise recordings in a borehole in West Bohemia/Vogtland JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - The correct estimation of site-specific attenuation is crucial for the assessment of seismic hazard. Downhole instruments provide in this context valuable information to constrain attenuation directly from data. In this study, we apply an interferometric approach to this problem by deconvolving seismic motions recorded at depth with those recorded at the surface. In doing so, incident and surface-reflected waves can be separated. We apply this technique not only to earthquake data but also to recordings of ambient vibrations. We compute the transfer function between incident and surface-reflected waves in order to infer frequency-dependent quality factors for S waves. The method is applied to a 87m deep borehole sensor and a colocated surface instrument situated at a hard-rock site in West Bohemia/Vogtland, Germany. We show that the described method provides comparable attenuation estimates using either earthquake data or ambient noise for frequencies between 5 and 15 Hz. Moreover, a single hour of noise recordings seems to be sufficient to yield stable deconvolution traces and quality factors, thus, offering a fast and easy way to derive attenuation estimates from borehole recordings even in low- to mid-seismicity regions. KW - Downholemethods KW - Seismic attenuation KW - Seismic interferometry KW - Seismic noise Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggy422 SN - 0956-540X SN - 1365-246X VL - 216 IS - 1 SP - 251 EP - 260 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kriegerowski, Marius A1 - Petersen, Gesa Maria A1 - Vasyura-Bathke, Hannes A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias T1 - A Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Localization of Clustered Earthquakes Based on Multistation Full Waveforms JF - Seismological research letters N2 - Earthquake localization is both a necessity within the field of seismology, and a prerequisite for further analysis such as source studies and hazard assessment. Traditional localization methods often rely on manually picked phases. We present an alternative approach using deep learning that once trained can predict hypocenter locations efficiently. In seismology, neural networks have typically been trained with either single-station records or based on features that have been extracted previously from the waveforms. We use three-component full-waveform records of multiple stations directly. This means no information is lost during preprocessing and preparation of the data does not require expert knowledge. The first convolutional layer of our deep convolutional neural network (CNN) becomes sensitive to features that characterize the waveforms it is trained on. We show that this layer can therefore additionally be used as an event detector. As a test case, we trained our CNN using more than 2000 earthquake swarm events from West Bohemia, recorded by nine local three-component stations. The CNN successfully located 908 validation events with standard deviations of 56.4 m in east-west, 123.8 m in north-south, and 136.3 m in vertical direction compared to a double-difference relocated reference catalog. The detector is sensitive to events with magnitudes down to M-L = -0.8 with 3.5% false positive detections. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1785/0220180320 SN - 0895-0695 SN - 1938-2057 VL - 90 IS - 2 SP - 510 EP - 516 PB - Seismological Society of America CY - Albany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lontsi, Agostiny Marrios A1 - Garcia-Jerez, Antonio A1 - Camilo Molina-Villegas, Juan A1 - Jose Sanchez-Sesma, Francisco A1 - Molkenthin, Christian A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Krüger, Frank A1 - Wang, Rongjiang A1 - Fah, Donat T1 - A generalized theory for full microtremor horizontal-to-vertical [H/V(z,f)] spectral ratio interpretation in offshore and onshore environments JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - Advances in the field of seismic interferometry have provided a basic theoretical interpretation to the full spectrum of the microtremor horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio [H/V(f)]. The interpretation has been applied to ambient seismic noise data recorded both at the surface and at depth. The new algorithm, based on the diffuse wavefield assumption, has been used in inversion schemes to estimate seismic wave velocity profiles that are useful input information for engineering and exploration seismology both for earthquake hazard estimation and to characterize surficial sediments. However, until now, the developed algorithms are only suitable for on land environments with no offshore consideration. Here, the microtremor H/V(z, f) modelling is extended for applications to marine sedimentary environments for a 1-D layered medium. The layer propagator matrix formulation is used for the computation of the required Green’s functions. Therefore, in the presence of a water layer on top, the propagator matrix for the uppermost layer is defined to account for the properties of the water column. As an application example we analyse eight simple canonical layered earth models. Frequencies ranging from 0.2 to 50 Hz are considered as they cover a broad wavelength interval and aid in practice to investigate subsurface structures in the depth range from a few meters to a few hundreds of meters. Results show a marginal variation of 8 per cent at most for the fundamental frequency when a water layer is present. The water layer leads to variations in H/V peak amplitude of up to 50 per cent atop the solid layers. KW - Numerical modelling KW - Earthquake hazards KW - Seismic interferometry KW - Site effects KW - Theoretical seismology KW - Wave propagation Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggz223 SN - 0956-540X SN - 1365-246X VL - 218 IS - 2 SP - 1276 EP - 1297 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Knapmeyer-Endrun, Brigitte A1 - Golombek, Matthew P. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias T1 - Rayleigh Wave Ellipticity Modeling and Inversion for Shallow Structure at the Proposed InSight Landing Site in Elysium Planitia, Mars JF - Space science reviews N2 - The SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) instrument onboard the InSight mission will be the first seismometer directly deployed on the surface of Mars. From studies on the Earth and the Moon, it is well known that site amplification in low-velocity sediments on top of more competent rocks has a strong influence on seismic signals, but can also be used to constrain the subsurface structure. Here we simulate ambient vibration wavefields in a model of the shallow sub-surface at the InSight landing site in Elysium Planitia and demonstrate how the high-frequency Rayleigh wave ellipticity can be extracted from these data and inverted for shallow structure. We find that, depending on model parameters, higher mode ellipticity information can be extracted from single-station data, which significantly reduces uncertainties in inversion. Though the data are most sensitive to properties of the upper-most layer and show a strong trade-off between layer depth and velocity, it is possible to estimate the velocity and thickness of the sub-regolith layer by using reasonable constraints on regolith properties. Model parameters are best constrained if either higher mode data can be used or additional constraints on regolith properties from seismic analysis of the hammer strokes of InSight’s heat flow probe HP3 are available. In addition, the Rayleigh wave ellipticity can distinguish between models with a constant regolith velocity and models with a velocity increase in the regolith, information which is difficult to obtain otherwise. KW - Mars KW - Interior KW - Seismology KW - Regoliths Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-016-0300-1 SN - 0038-6308 SN - 1572-9672 VL - 211 SP - 339 EP - 382 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Garofalo, F. A1 - Foti, S. A1 - Hollender, F. A1 - Bard, Pierre-Yves A1 - Cornou, C. A1 - Cox, B. R. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Sicilia, D. A1 - Asten, M. A1 - Di Giulio, G. A1 - Forbriger, T. A1 - Guillier, B. A1 - Hayashi, K. A1 - Martin, A. A1 - Matsushima, Satoru A1 - Mercerat, D. A1 - Poggi, V. A1 - Yamanaka, H. T1 - InterPACIFIC project: Comparison of invasive and non-invasive methods for seismic site characterization. Part I: Intra-comparison of surface wave methods JF - Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering N2 - The main scope of the InterPACIFIC (Intercomparison of methods for site parameter and velocity profile characterization) project is to assess the reliability of in-hole and surface-wave methods, used for estimating shear wave velocity. Three test-sites with different subsurface conditions were chosen: a soft soil, a stiff soil and a rock outcrop. This paper reports the surface-wave methods results. Specifically 14 teams of expert users analysed the same experimental surface-wave datasets, consisting of both passive and active data. Each team adopted their own strategy to retrieve the dispersion curve and the shear-wave velocity profile at each site. Despite different approaches, the dispersion curves are quite in agreement with each other. Conversely, the shear-wave velocity profiles show a certain variability that increases in correspondence of major stratigraphic interfaces. This larger variability is mainly due to non-uniqueness of the solution and lateral variability. As expected, the observed variability in V-s,V-30 estimatesis small, as solution non-uniqueness plays a limited role. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Surface-wave methods KW - Dispersion curve KW - Inversion KW - V-s,V-30 KW - Site characterization KW - MASW KW - Microtremors KW - Rayleigh waves KW - Geophysical methods Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2015.12.010 SN - 0267-7261 SN - 1879-341X VL - 82 SP - 222 EP - 240 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lontsi, Agostiny Marrios A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Krüger, Frank T1 - Shear wave velocity profile estimation by integrated analysis of active and passive seismic data from small aperture arrays JF - Journal of applied geophysics N2 - We present an integrated approach for deriving the 1D shear wave velocity (Vs) information at few tens to hundreds of meters down to the first strong impedance contrast in typical sedimentary environments. We use multiple small aperture seismic arrays in 1D and 2D configuration to record active and passive seismic surface wave data at two selected geotechnical sites in Germany (Horstwalde & Lobnitz). Standard methods for data processing include the Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) method that exploits the high frequency content in the active data and the sliding window frequency-wavenumber (f-k) as well as the spatial autocorrelation (SPAC) methods that exploit the low frequency content in passive seismic data. Applied individually, each of the passive methods might be influenced by any source directivity in the noise wavefield. The advantages of active shot data (known source location) and passive microtremor (low frequency content) recording may be combined using a correlation based approach applied to the passive data in the so called Interferometric Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (IMASW). In this study, we apply those methods to jointly determine and interpret the dispersion characteristics of surface waves recorded at Horstwalde and Lobnitz. The reliability of the dispersion curves is controlled by applying strict limits on the interpretable range of wavelengths in the analysis and further avoiding potentially biased phase velocity estimates from the passive f-k method by comparing to those derived from the SPatial AutoCorrelation method (SPAC). From our investigation at these two sites, the joint analysis as proposed allows mode extraction in a wide frequency range (similar to 0.6-35 Hz at Horstwalde and similar to 1.5-25 Hz at Lobnitz) and consequently improves the Vs profile inversion. To obtain the shear wave velocity profiles, we make use of a global inversion approach based on the neighborhood algorithm to invert the interpreted branches of the dispersion curves. Within the uncertainty given by the apparent spread of forward models we find that besides a well defined sediment velocity range also a reasonable minimum estimate of bedrock depth and bedrock velocity can be achieved. The Vs estimate for the best model in Horstwalde ranges from similar to 190 m/s at the surface up to similar to 390 m/s in the bottom of the soft sediment column. The bedrock starts earliest around 200 m depth and bedrock velocities are higher than 1000 m/s. In Lobnitz, we observe slightly lower velocities for the sediments (similar to 165-375 m/s for the best model) and a minimum thickness of 75 m. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Active seismic KW - Passive seismic KW - Virtual active seismic KW - Dispersion curves KW - Inversion KW - V-s profiles Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jappgeo.2016.03.034 SN - 0926-9851 SN - 1879-1859 VL - 130 SP - 37 EP - 52 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tran Thanh Tuan, A1 - Pham Chi Vinh, A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Malischewsky, Peter A1 - Aoudia, Abdelkrim T1 - An Improved Formula of Fundamental Resonance Frequency of a Layered Half-Space Model Used in H/V Ratio Technique JF - Pure and applied geophysics N2 - The resonance frequency of the transmission response in layered half-space model is important in the study of site effect because it is the frequency where the shake-ability of the ground is enhanced significantly. In practice, it is often determined by the H/V ratio technique in which the peak frequency of recorded H/V spectral ratio is interpreted as the resonance frequency. Despite of its importance, there has not been any formula of the resonance frequency of the layered half-space structure. In this paper, a simple approximate formula of the fundamental resonance frequency is presented after an exact formula in explicit form of the response function of vertically SH incident wave is obtained. The formula is in similar form with the one used in H/V ratio technique but it reflects several major effects of the model to the resonance frequency such as the arrangement of layers, the impedance contrast between layers and the half-space. Therefore, it could be considered as an improved formula used in H/V ratio technique. The formula also reflects the consistency between two approaches of the H/V ratio technique based on SH body waves or Rayleigh surface waves on the peak frequency under high impedance contrast condition. This formula is in explicit form and, therefore, may be used in the direct and inverse problem efficiently. A numerical illustration of the improved formula for an actual layered half-space model already investigated by H/V ratio technique is presented to demonstrate its new features and its improvement to the currently used formula. KW - Response function KW - H/V ratio technique KW - Orthotropy KW - SH waves KW - Quarter-wavelength principle Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1313-0 SN - 0033-4553 SN - 1420-9136 VL - 173 SP - 2803 EP - 2812 PB - Springer CY - Basel ER -