Locating Seismic Events in the CTBT Context

The verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) requires the determination of accurate location of seismic events from a fixed network of seismic stations across the globe. The requirements of possible on-site inspections mean that the goal is to place the location estimate in a zone smaller than 1000 km2 that includes the true location. Because a defined set of stations will be used, corrections can be refined to represent the influence of departures from the global reference model IASPEI91. The primary stations in the International Monitoring Scheme (IMS) are mostly seismic arrays and therefore the present location scheme is based on minimisation of a misfit function built from arrival time, azimuth and array slowness residuals. The effective network will change markedly with the magnitude of the event and as a result regional information has to be integrated into the location process.