Repopulating Earthquake Catalog in the Hindu Kush-Pamir Region using
Attentive Deep Learning Model
Abstract
Seismology data is overgrowing and is outpacing the development of
processing algorithms. This tremendous increase in high-quality data can
help better understand the earthquake processes related to the geology
of active seismic regions such as the Hindu Kush. Most traditional
detection algorithms are computationally inefficient compared to the
amount of seismological data available and fail to detect low magnitude
and noisy events. Deep learning algorithms are known for their
applicability on large datasets with less runtime. Event detection and
phase detection can be considered a supervised deep-learning problem
quite similar to image recognition. In this study, we have implemented a
hierarchical attention mechanism-based deep learning model for
simultaneously phase picking and earthquake detection. This model is
trained using Stanford Earthquake Dataset (STEAD), a globally disturbed
labeled seismic dataset. We used this trained deep learning model to
detect earthquake signals and pick P and S phases in the Hindu Kush -
Pamir region for twelve months of continuous data spread across 83
different stations. A rigorous selection criterion based on detection, P
and S phase probabilities, and other parameters has been used to
associate the phases from different stations and to locate the
earthquake. Our model detected almost seve times more earthquakes than
previously existed in the catalog. The algorithm picked P and S phases
with a high level of precision, comparable to human analyst picks.
Furthermore, pinpointing these events allowed us to define the S-shaped
seismic zone in the Pamir-Hindu Kush region and better comprehend the
deformation caused by Eurasian- Indian plate motion.