Quarterly Updates
January - March 2006

2006 began with a warm welcome to our new seismologist, Beatriz Vera, who arrived from the Southwestern Seismological Observatory, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia where she processed and analysed the seismic data of the Southwestern Seismological Network. Beatriz has a degree in Statistics from the Engineering Faculty, Universidad del Valle in Colombia. She has started her training at ISC under the supervision of Dmitry Storchak, Chief Seismologist. We wish her great success in her work and a pleasant stay with the ISC in the UK.

Beatriz Vera

Another welcome also goes to Hoan Seung Kim from the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Kim is a recipient of a British Chevening-Korean Government Joint Scholarship and will stay for 6 months. The main purpose of his visit is to learn about earthquake location procedures and application of a relational seismic database, later to be implemented in Korea for the improvement of the seismological operations of KMA. During the first three months at ISC, Kim has helped Peter Dawson and James Harris to integrate new Korean data into the ISC database and used ISCloc to relocate earthquakes that occurred in and around the Korean peninsula during 2002-2005. Kim, guided by Avi Shapira, is currently studying the discrepancies between the locations determined by KMA and those obtained by using ISCloc.

Hoan Seung Kim

ISC is also happy to greet John Young who has recently retired from the seismology unit at AWE (Atomic Weapon Establishment) Blacknest. John has volunteered to share with ISC his vast experience in analysing data from the ISC Bulletin and Fortran programming. ISC offered John the facilities to continue his development of the IASPEI working group on regionalization (a scheme ISC adopted more than a year ago when preparing its Bulletin).

In January 2006, ISC was honoured by a visit from Dr. Fredrick Simon, formerly of the US Geological Survey and now a special advisor to UNESCO in Paris. Fred is the man behind the RELEMR (Reducing Earthquake Losses in the Extended Mediterranean Region) and RELSAR, (Reducing Earthquake Losses in the South Asia Region) successful initiatives in which ISC takes part.

The re-insurance company Munich-Re and ISC have recently finalised a contract that grants the ISC an annual support of 5,000. This sponsorship is gratefully acknowledged on the ISC home web page. We have also received a grant from the Royal Society of London to purchase the InDesign software to be used for preparing ISC publications.

Following a number of visits to Turkey and discussions with Prof. G. Barbarosaglu and other prominent Turkish scientists, the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Engineering Institute (KOERI) of the Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey has joined the ISC. KOERI will be represented on the ISC Governing Council by Prof. N.M. Ozel who was a seismologist at ISC during 2002-2004. Kandilli Observatory was established in 1868. In 1983 it was annexed to Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey and was given institutional academic status under the name; Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI). KOERI is active in various observational fields, but the main emphasis is earthquake research, education and seismic monitoring services.

KOERI today has evolved into a multidisciplinary earthquake research organization providing graduate education in three departments namely Earthquake Engineering, Geophysics and Geodesy. The overall mandate of the department is to conduct graduate level training, research and implementation that will contribute to seismically safer structures, systems and environment. NEMC - the National Earthquake Monitoring Center (formerly the Seismology Department) of KOERI has been monitoring earthquakes in Turkey since 1926. The first station was a mechanical Mainka seismograph installed in Istanbul Kandilli Station-ISK. KOERI's seismic network was deployed in the early 1970's with the installation of seismic stations in Western Turkey. A seismic network, MARNET, with radio telemetry was installed in the Marmara region in 1978 and currently 40 stations provide real time data. NEMC expanded its network throughout Turkey in 1993 with the installation of modern on-line and dial-up seismic stations. Today, The Seismological Observatory of KOERI operates a total of 113 seismic stations. The main task of NEMC is seismic monitoring and the study of the seismicity of Turkey. NEMC hasimproved and modernized its technical capacity and at the same time enlarged its scientific and technical staff. Today, NEMC of KOERI has a staff of more than 20 people with academic degrees working to fulfil the NEMC mission.

Bogazici University: Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Engineering Institute Stations

The ISC has also received a subscription from National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) of Egypt. In 2005, NRIAG start routinely contributing the data from the Egyptian seismological network. In Egypt, on 12 October 1992, an earthquake with magnitude 5.9 mb caused 561 deaths, 9832 injured and left a damage of more than 35 million US$. As a result of this earthquake, the Egyptian Government increased its support to the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG), facilitating the installation of the Egyptian National Seismic network ENSN and the strong motion network.

The Egyptian National Seismic Network consists of a main centre located in Helwan and five sub-centres located in Hurghada, Burg El-Arab, Mersa Alam, Aswan and Kharga. In 2003, eight new stations were deployed and became part of the ENSN. The main centre receives the seismic data from the closer stations by telemetry and from the remote stations and the sub-centres via telephone lines and satellite communications. The data is analyzed for determining the earthquake parameters.

The Seismic Data Analysis Software was provided by Nanometrics Inc. (Canada). It enables online retrieval of digital data from remote sites, provides graphical tools to measure arrival times of P and S-wave phases and measure amplitudes. Hypocentres are determined by either Hypo71 PC (Lee and Valdes, 1985) or LOC (Geological Survey of Canada) programs. The ENSN provides ML (Local Richter's magnitudes) and Mn (After Nuttli,1973).