About us
Verification Activities at the Swiss Seismological Service
The verification activities at the Swiss Seismological
Service are based on a task jointly assigned to us by the Swiss Federal Department of the
Interior and the Department of
Foreign Affairs. In agreement with these tasks we see our role as follows:
- Operate the seismic auxiliary station DAVOX with a high reliability and with regularly calibrated instruments.
- Provide high-quality data through the AutoDRM interface upon requests from the IDC; document the performance by appropriate measurements.
- Automatically monitor the health of our data archive and alert the seismologist on duty in case of a failure.
- Provide Swiss Government Authorities with expertise and first-hand information; represent Switzerland in scientific and technical meetings of the States signatories, related to the establishment and operation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).
- Maintain contacts with other National Data Centers (NDCs) and the International Data Center (IDC) for cooperation purposes (such as common scientific projects, knowledge transfer, and task sharing).
- Implement new scientific methods and technology developments by maintaining an innovative research programme and by publishing the results in highly ranked journals.
Main Activities at the Swiss National Data Centre (NDC) The main activities at the Swiss National Data Centre related to seismic verification include quality control as well as applied research towards improved data exchange features, the discrimination between earthquakes and explosions, and the effects of different geographical coordinate systems.
We also participate in meetings of the Working Group B at the Vienna International Centre (a rather huge building complex) in Vienna on behalf of Switzerland. The CTBTO is located in the floors five to eight in building E.
Participation of Switzerland in the Work of the GSE From 1989 to 1996 Switzerland was participating in the work of the GSE (Group of Scientific Experts) and a member of several working groups (still a member of the GSETT-3 Working Group on Planning).
Between 1 January 1995 and 31 May 1996 the Swiss 3-component station Alpnach (APL) was part of the GSETT-3 auxiliary network (see station map for the locations of the stations of the Swiss network). During 1995, the International Data Center (IDC) retrieved a total of 9372 digital waveforms (seismograms) from our station APL using our AutoDRM. From mid-april 1996 to mid-february 2002 the designated auxiliary IMS-station near Davos (code: DAVOS) was part of the GSETT-3 network.
