This group, led by Dr. Maren Böse and Dr. Frédérick Massin, developss advanced methods for rapidly detecting and characterising earthquakes that potentially impact people and buildings. It focuses on earthquake early warning (EEW), rapid and evolutionary ShakeMaps, rapid impact assessments and awareness campaigns. The team is working closely with other SED groups to develop key components of a dynamic earthquake risk framework that seamlessly integrates diverse seismic products and accesses the same databases, workflows and software.
The group’s EEW efforts include developing, testing and operationalising algorithms (Virtual Seismologist, Finite-Fault Rupture Detector (FinDer)), optimising seismic network and processing infrastructure, distributing low latency alerts, conducting societal studies, and cost-benefit analyses. Among others, the group is working closely with teams from ShakeAlert (USA, CAN), Central America (NI, CR, SV, GT), GNS Science (NZ), INGV (IT), and CWA (TW). The group developed and managed the ETHZ-SED SeisComP EEW (ESE) add-ons. These tools facilitate real-time and playback testing, ensuring community standard data and metadata compatibility.
The real-time seismology group is also developing novel methods for rapid data assimilation from various European web services (ORFEUS, EMSC) and for the cross-border exchange of seismic waveforms. These efforts aim to develop workflows for rapid source characterisation (e.g., for ShakeMap calculations), including finite faults. Research is also being conducted into how new technologies like distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) can be integrated into real-time seismology. In addition, the group leads the seismo@school programme, which aims to educate students on earthquake science.