Location Calibration Data for CTBT Monitoring at the Prototype International Data Center

Ground-truth information is essential for location calibration of the International Monitoring System network being developed under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. The objective of the calibration effort is to improve the accuracy of seismic event locations and to reduce the size of the error ellipse, both in automatic and in human analyst-reviewed bulletins, in order to meet the On-Site Inspection requirement for the size of the inspection area. Several databases were compiled and are maintained at the Prototype International Data Center (PIDC) to support calibration efforts. The Nuclear Explosion Database contains most readily accessible information about all nuclear explosions worldwide. The events in the Calibration Event Bulletin (CEB) carefully selected well located events from the PIDC Reviewed Event Bulletin and relocated using additional arrivals from regional networks requested from various National Data Centers. The Ground-Truth Database contains carefully selected events with known or well estimated location accuracies from the Nuclear Explosion Database, CEB, as well as from bulletins of U.S. National Earthquake Information Center and International Seismic Centre. It also contains data on chemical explosions and quarry blasts when confirmed by local or national authorities. Ground-truth events are subdivided into various ground-truth categories according to their location accuracy. The databases have been used in various calibration studies to derive and test corrections to improve event locations. Several location calibration techniques are briefly described. The validation test for any proposed operational change requires that the results meet the location calibration metrics developed and implemented at the PIDC.