Real-time Earthquake Search Engine with Historic Data for Database

To monitor and report earthquake parameters that include location and source focal mechanism in real time in a local or regional scale, we apply a search engine approach to find the best waveform matches to any new event from a pre-established database. In such a small scale area for monitoring earthquakes, earth heterogeneity strongly influences high-frequency seismic wave propagation. Conventional 1-D theoretical seismogram calculation is likely inaccurate enough to match data. Fortunately, in Jinggu, Yunnan, China where we are monitoring earthquake activities, there were over ten thousands of small earthquakes (Ms>1.0) in 2014 in an area covering 100 km by 100 km and from 5 to 20 km in depth. Since these events occurred near an existing fault and the coverage is sufficient, we use these events to create a historic database. When any new earthquake occurs in the same area, we apply a fast search engine approach to find the best match among historic data and estimate its location and focal mechanism immediately using the search results. For any event outside the database coverage area, the search engine can easily differentiate that using a similarity criterion.