A Software Toolbox for Systematic Evaluation of Seismometer-Digitizer System Responses

Measurement of the absolute amplitudes of a seismic signal requires accurate knowledge of the seismometer-digitizer response. In some cases, particularly for historic data or data from denied regions, the response may be unknown or incorrectly known. Under the DOE SBIR/STTR FY 2009 Phase I program (Grant DE-FG02-09ER85548) Weston Geophysical Corp., in partnership with Dr. Robert Herrmann (St. Louis University) have developed a set of software tools that can recover the sensor/digitizer response function from raw seismic data. These software tools include: a) SACPSD, a power spectral density (PSD) estimator for background noise spectra at a seismic station which is used to monitor network performance and metadata validity, and b) NOISETRAN, a prototype method of estimating the broadband seismic system response for a seismic station based on the background noise at a nearby reference station. We have developed Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) that provide seismologists with easy access to the software and databases in the system response recovery toolbox. In Phase II we propose to fully develop and Alpha and Beta test our software toolbox so that it can be easily used by seismologists to monitor the data quality recorded on worldwide seismic networks.