Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 1
1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Negotiations of a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) are now underway,
and the Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely in May ~ 995. Both ofthese
are important steps in the reduction of the worldwide threat of nuclear weapons. These
treaties create a need to monitor for nuclear explosions in the context of national and
international efforts in nuclear arms control. Seismology, a discipline that provides the
principal technology for detecting, locating, and identifying underground nuclear
explosions on a global basis, is confronted with the massive new challenge of
monitoring a global ban on all nuclear testing. With seismology playing a prominent
role in U.S. and international treaty monitoring procedures, it is essential to plan
carefully the seismological monitoring system at all levels, from the basic research
programs that support the monitoring effort, to the instrumentation, to the use of the
results in the national verification system. This report will address many of the key
issues associated with implementing the seismological monitoring system.
The United States is now in a time of pivotal decision-making, with major issues
being decided that will affect the field of seismology for the next few decades. Major
expenditures by the United States and other nations are now being made to provide the
seismic recording and analysis capabilities essential for a cooperative international
monitoring effort. In the rapidly evolving political landscape surrounding nuclear test-
ban and nonproliferation treaties, there is a window of opportunity to ensure that the
international seismic system will contribute broadly to multiple issues of national
concern, including earthquake monitoring and basic research on earth structure and
processes, as well as treaty verification functions. Small nuclear tests, such as might be
part of a clandestine weapons program, produce ground vibration levels equivalent to
those of thousands of natural seismic events that occur each year. And improved
seismological methods will be needed to assess the nature of these sources. The vast
majority of recorded events will be natural earthquakes, and the seismic recordings
made for monitoring purposes will be users! for further scientific analysis and hazard
assessment.
Both broadband and short-period array data will be collected by the international
treaty monitoring system, and all these data have multiple potential applications. The
1
OCR for page 2
2
Comprehensive Test Ban Monitoring System
large quantity of both ty pes of data offers a significant increase in the number of timely
signals that can be accessed from stations around the world for earthquake monitoring
and basic research applications as well as for basic monitoring applications. Rapid,
widespread access to the treaty monitoring data will provide improved determination
of earthquake fault mechanisms and more reliable rapid earthquake assessment and
. . . ~
tsunami warning capab~t~es.
This report describes ways of ensuring the multiple use of the seismic data
collected by the new treaty monitoring system, along with measures needed to sustain
the treaty monitoring capabilities ofthe United States into the future. The recommenda-
tions address issues associated with the characteristics of the instrumentation of the
international seismic monitoring system (TSMS), the critical importance of open access
to the data collected by the system, and the U.S. infrastructure needed to sustain the
long-term monitoring of nuclear testing treaties.
The treaty monitoring data will be of very high quality but will constitute only
a fraction of the total seismic data required for earthquake monitoring and basic
research. The new international seismological system that is being developed presents
an opportunity to break down past barriers to broad usage of data collected by treaty
monitoring activities, to the benefit of all applications. The key to achieving this goal
lies in the definition of the functions of the U.S. National Data Center, which will
support both the international monitoring program and the national verification
function. If the monitoring capability is to be maximized and other nationally important
applications are to benefit, the U.S. National Data Center mission statement must
include a data access obligation and appropriate funding must be identified to support
this activity. Both the archiving and the distribution of the TSMS data have cost
implications for the U.S. NDC. Because no specific plan has yet been put forth, the
pane! did not attempt any detailed cost analyses. We have suggested what appears to be
the most economical approach.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that basic seismological research efforts are
an essential part of the national strategy for long-term treaty verification. These are
required both to enhance treaty monitoring capabilities and to ensure a pool of
seismological expertise for future monitoring efforts.
The research community can also play a part in the confidence-building process
that is an essential element in the justification of the ISMS. These researchers will be
advisors to their governments and will provide important independent checks and
balances on the operations of the monitoring system, and sources of insight into the
geophysical properties of regions of Earth, the nature of specific events of interest, and
monitoring methods in general. In addition, the broader the user community is, the
better the feedback about quality control issues and instrumentation problems. Such
OCR for page 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
3
problems are often revealed in the course of analysis of recordings for large earth-
quakes, which may be ignored in the national verification effort.
The specific recommendations are listed in the next section. Those concerned
with Data Characteristics and Data Access have been issued, essentially in their present
form in preliminary reports designed to provide timely inflation and assistance to the
U.S. negotiating team in Geneva.
Recommendations
Continuous recordings from the high quality, globally distributed seismometers
of the TSMS can be used beneficially for numerous purposes, if the seismological
system has certain attributes. These include the recording system characteristics, as
discussed in Chapter 3; the availability of the data to diverse seismological communi-
ties, as discussed in Chapter 4; and a strong seismic research and development program,
as discussed in Chapter 5. The large international investments in the new ISMS must
not be underutilized by the United States, as has often been the case with data collected
for nuclear test monitoring in the past. Relatively low-cost efforts can ensure maximum
utilization of the data for a variety of activities in the national interest, as well as
augment the research and development efforts that support U.S. treaty verification
capabilities. The panel has addressed both specific technical issues and larger-scale
infrastructure questions in pursuit of optimization of use of the ISMS data. The
recommendations in this report have been framed to enhance U.S. activities in both
nuclear test-ban monitoring and earthquake monitoring. Failure to follow through on
the recommendations, especially those concerned with data accessj watt lead to duplica-
tion of effort in the seismological system and underutilization of seismic data acquired
at substantial cost.
The primary recommendations of this report are summarized below:
Data Characteristics
It is important that the data characteristics of the new TSMS stations be
compatible with the broad needs of seismology in general as well as fifing treaty
monitoring requirements. The panel's main recommendations for data characteristics
involve bandwidth and recording-system specifications. The interest in high-frequency
signals from small events for CTBT monitoring has led to an emphasis on that part of
the seismic spectrum in the ISMS station design, but it is technologically straightfor-
ward to simultaneously record lower- frequency signals that are of primary value for
OCR for page 4
4
Comprehensive Test Ban Monitoring System
earthquake monitoring and basic research on earthquake processes and earth structure.
The extended bandwidth also has important potential applications in discriminating
explosion and earthquake signals. Care must be taken to ensure that lower-frequency
signals are not clipped when the high-frequency signals are emphasized. This involves
modest enhancement of ISMS station designs, with no reduction in high-frequency
capabilities. The primary recommendations from Chapter 3 are technical in nature and
are given below:
· Wherever possible, without degrading the ISMS's monitoring performance,
extend the bandpass of the ISMS broadband three-component elements to as low as
0.003 Hz.
Relax the low noise requirement to the ~ 0-20 Hz range.
Re-evaluate the sample rate requirements.
Relax the resolution requirements for broadband three-component elements
and base the noise floor on local conditions.
.
Provide better specification of the sensitivity goals, emphasizing perfor
mance at higher frequencies.
.
Specify the frequency band of the system noise requirement.
Develop a mechanism to provide data in SEED (Standard for Exchange of
Earthquake Data) format in addition to other formats that might be used.
· Reconsider the data frame length requirement.
Establish separate data availability requirements for primary and auxiliary
.
stations.
.
Relax the orientation tolerance for primary station instrumentation.
Data Access Within the United States
Given suitable data characteristics, the ISMS data set can contribute to diverse
efforts that address earthquake monitoring and basic research on earthquakes and earth
structure, as well as the nuclear test-ban monitoring effort. To enable these multiple
uses of the seismic data, it is important to establish convenient pathways for data access
in the United States that do not interfere with the nation's primary operations of the
nuclear test-ban monitoring effort. This report proposes cost-effective strategies that
will provide these pathways. The key element is to ensure that the U.S. nuclear
monitoring effort and the existing data archival and distribution capabilities are
integrated for the mutual benefit of all seismological applications serving the nation.
The primary recommendations from Chapter 4 concern policy on data access and are
given below:
OCR for page 5
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
· At a minimum, the development of the ISMS should augment, not reduce,
the capabilities ofthe U.S. scientific community. Therefore, it should not restrict current
paths of access to existing stations nor limit access to new unclassified stations.
Implementing this guideline will require attention to preexisting international
relationships, treaty language, and agreements regarding seismic data exchange.
· The U.S. position should be that the entire ISMS seismic data set should be
available in a timely manner and that these data should be unclassified. Distribution
within any country would of course be the responsibility of that country's National Data
Center. Therefore the U.S. government should ensure that these data are readily
accessible in the United States.
The U.S. ISMS National Data Center (ISMS-NDC) is expected to receive
.
all of the ISMS primary-network data for U.S. treaty monitoring use. The panel
recommends that the U.S. ISMS-NDC should be operated under a policy that requires
it to provide the U.S. scientific, disaster prevention, and earthquake monitoring
communities with stable, timely access to all signals and seismic event data that it
receives from the ISMS. Costs of operating the ISMS-NDC should be provided by the
nuclear monitoring community; incremental system costs for external data transmission
should be provided by the earthquake monitoring agencies and by agencies supporting
research on nuclear explosion and earthquake monitoring. To facilitate interagency data
transmission and to deal with cost issues, the ISMS-NDC should establish a
multiagency advisory committee, with representation from the nuclear monitoring,
earthquake monitoring, and basic research communities, to address data distribution
issues.
· All broadband data from primary and auxiliary stations received by the
ISMS-NDC should be made available to the earthquake monitoring agencies in the
United States in near real time (possibly by direct rebroadcast from the ISMS-NDC or
by satellite downlink). These data should be archived in and made accessible on various
media through the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology's Data Manage-
ment System (IRIS-DMS). This system has extensive capabilities for servicing diverse
data requests and a willingness to distribute ISMS broadband data along with other
global broadband seismic data. This approach provides a permanent on-line archive of
the broadband TSMS data set, facilitates user access to the data, and greatly reduces the
data-distribution load on the ISMS-NDC. Assuming the data are accompanied by
quality-control information, the incremental costs involved should be borne by the
earthquake monitoring agencies and by agencies supporting research on nuclear
explosion and earthquake monitoring.
· The continuous data from auxiliary stations (most of which will not be
accessed routinely by the ISMS) should continue to be archived and distributed through
existing procedures of the Federation of Digital Seismographic Networks (FDSN).
OCR for page 6
6
Comprehensive Test Ban Monitoring System
Operational support for U.S. auxiliary stations should be shared by the nuclear
monitoring, earthquake monitoring, and basic research agencies.
Continuous data from short-per~od arrays will comprise most of the ISMS
data. These data will be important for nuclear monitoring operations. Currently, the
earthquake monitoring and basic research programs have limited demand for array data,
but this will almost certainly grow with time. The research that supports nuclear
monitoring watt require access to these data. The ISMS-NDC watt archive the array data,
and it is certainly not cost effective to duplicate this archive. Therefore, a user-friendly
interface should be established to provide access to the entire data set. We propose that
the U.S. Geological Survey and/or TRIS are logical entities to coordinate with the
TSMS-NDC to develop a user-friendly pathway to all of the array data. The incremental
costs involved in establishing and maintaining this pathway should be borne by agencies
supporting research on nuclear explosion and earthquake monitoring.
· Seismic event data (arrival times, amplitudes, ray parameters, final event
bulletins) generated by the ISMS should be made available through appropriate National
Data Centers to the U.S. earthquake monitoring agencies as well as to the International
Seismological Centre (ISC) to enable improvements in the seism~city bulletins produced
by those agencies. Electronic transmission should minimize the costs.
· The Group of Scientific Experts Technical Test #3 (GSETT-3) experiment
can be used to develop and test the data distribution pathways recommended above. The
data from GSETT-3 currently being collected by the ISMS-IDC can be sent directly to
the USGS from the ISMS-IDC until such times as it is possible to transmit continuous
data from the TSMS-IDC.
Research Feedback
Monitoring compliance with a CTBT poses many unprecedented technical and
scientific challenges, and there will be a continuing need for basic and applied research,
as well as advanced technology and automated systems development, in all of the
disciplines that contribute to the monitoring system (OTA, 19881. It is especially
important that the use of comparatively new technologies such as Synthetic Aperture
Radar (SAR) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) be considered for integration
into the base data that will continue to come from continuous seismic recording. It is
essential to sustain basic research activities that will train the next generation of
seismological experts vital to long-term treaty monitoring. Furthermore, it is critical to
have effective means by which basic research developments are carried out, the results
are tested in operational settings, and useful, cost-effective advances are implemented
in the operational system. This holds for both the ISMS and the U.S. monitoring
OCR for page 7
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
7
systems. Chapter 5 considers this topic in detail. It is assumed that the mission for
support of monitoring research will continue to reside within the Department of Defense
(DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE), with supporting activities by the USGS
and seismological research community. If these agency roles change, the basic
seismological research effort must be maintained by those responsible for the functions
of monitoring, verification, and hazard reporting. The primary recommendations from
Chapter 5 concern management issues and are given below:
· The DOD and DOE both have valuable assets and experience that can
contribute to the seismic research and development program supporting CTBT
monitoring. Continuation ofthe current coordinated research effort is in the best interest
of the United States. The overall research effort of the DOD and DOE programs should
be overseen by an advisory group that addresses both research coordination and
relevance. This advisory group should have access to policy-level management.
· The DOD research and development effort in support of monitoring a CTBT
should have a balanced program involving basic research, exploratory development, and
advanced development efforts (the standard 6. I, 6.2, 6.3 categories of DOD research
efforts), and an innovative technologies effort (traditionally the role of the Advanced
Research Projects Agency) servicing the end-user, which is currently the Air Force
Technical Applications Center (AFTAC).
· The Air Force basic research (6.~) program in seismology, currently
administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), should be
sustained, possibly with some short-term expansion, to maintain an influx of researchers
and fundamental research on long-term problems associated with seismological
monitoring of a CTBT.
· The Air Force exploratory development (6.2) program in seismology,
currently administered by the Air Force Phillips Laboratory, should be provided with
a stable base for external funding to enable effective development and transfer of
promising research and technologies from the AFOSR basic research program to the Air
Force operational environment.
· The Air Force advanced development research (6.3) program in seismology
currently administered by AFTAC should be sustained.
The development of the prototype ISMS International Data Center and other
advanced computer technology capabilities and high risk/high return research topics
currently sponsored by ARIA should be sustained.
.
.
The DOE research and development effort in support of seismic monitoring
of a CTBT should sustain its directed research program. involving national laboratory
and externally funded seismic research of direct relevance to the end-user, which is
currently AFTAC.
OCR for page 8
8
Comprehensive Test Ban Monitoring System
· A knowledgeable, responsible advisory mechanism should oversee the
combined DODiDOE research effort to ensure relevance and continued coordination
of the programs.
· lmprovect communication between and among the DOD operational units
and researchers in the basic and exploratory development programs is essential. Release
of information about operational methodologies and procedures, lists of problem events,
and comparisons of seismic bulletins from different communities are among the
activities that could enhance responsiveness of the research community to the
operational requirements. Communication across the various elements ofthe monitoring
and research communities should be fostered by symposia, workshops, site visits, and
advisory panels. Focused experiments, involving broad communities, should be
conducted to concentrate effort on important issues
· To the extent possible and consistent with national security considerations,
an unclassified experimental test bed facility that replicates the basic U.S. and ISMS
analysis procedures should be established and made broadly available to enable new
.
developments to be tested in a realistic environment, enhancing transfer of applied
research results into the operational systems.
· A research data base of important seismic recordings should be assembled
and maintained. Ground truth data bases should be provided to the test bed to assess
performance of new methods. A results data base and literature guide should also be
established.
.
Major research efforts that have potential benefits for both nuclear test and
earthquake monitoring, such as enhanced association algorithms, new regional event
location procedures, and event location procedures in three-dimensional models should
be coordinated through interagency working groups (for example, bridging between
AFTAC and the USGS, which conducts earthquake monitoring).
.
A program in which postdoctoral fellows and visiting researchers are able
to work at the international Data Center, as well as the U.S. National Data Center,
would provide effective communication between the operational and research environ-
ments.
Implementing the recommendations of this report regarding data characteristics,
data distribution, and research infrastructure will ensure that the United States derives
maximum benefit from its participation in the ISMS. Optimal multiple use of the
seismic data streams for nuclear test treaty monitoring, earthquake monitoring, and
basic earth science research will be enabled. In addition, U.S. treaty monitoring efforts
will continue to have the critical influx of research innovations, technical developments,
and personnel vital to an effective monitoring operation.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
treaty monitoring
