The virtual Middle East Seismographic Network (vMESN); Concept and Implementation

Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , Pages 363-372

Authors

¹ Array Information Technology, 5130 Commercial Drive, Suite B, Melbourne, FL 32940, USA

² Washington University in Saint Louis, Campus Box 1169, One Brookings Drive, Saint Louis, MO 63130, USA

³ Directorate General of Meteorology and Seismology, Erbil, Iraq,

⁴ Jordan Seismological Observatory and Geophysical Studies, Amman, Jordan

At the 7th Gulf Seismic Forum on January 22-25, 2012, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Ghalib et

al. (2012) proposed the establishment of vMESN. It is a virtual seismographic network

that all Middle East countries operating telemetered seismic stations can equally exploit

to monitor earthquakes in and around their respective territories. The overarching goal

of vMESN is to advance the teaching and practice of seismology and research among

member countries. It is a scientifically and economically rewarding concept with high

return on modest investment in resources and infrastructure. It is also technically

feasible to implement at member data centers to greatly improve the capability and

coverage of their national networks when augmented with international stations in the

region. The integrated real-time data that vMESN provides is invaluable for research

and development in seismology and earthquakes engineering. Presently, vMESN is

implemented and operational at Jordan, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah Seismological

Observatories (JSO, ESO and SSO, respectively) and at Array Information Technology

(AIT) data center in Maryland, USA. At no cost to the host and member countries, AIT

is contributing real-time data from the international stations in the region; Jordan is

contributing real-time data from their Jordan Seismological Network (JSN), and

Kurdistan from their KSIRS array and some of the North Iraq Seismographic Network

(NISN) stations. Three-component data from a total of 72 stations is currently being

automatically shared and independently processed at the aforementioned data centers.

The Antelope, and soon SeisComp3, real-time software system is configured to

automatically acquire, forward and process the data. The invitation is open to all

countries in the Middle East to join vMESN, if they commit to the requirement of

sharing data in real-time over Internet. Each member country continues to maintain full

control over their networks’ data and over what to acquire and forward to others. Also,

each member country continues to independently process the data and publishes bulletins

in accordance with its technical practices, standards and regulations.

Statistics