Potential Advantages of a Strong-motion Velocity Meter over a Strong-motion Accelerometer

This study examines whether it would be better to deploy a velocity-recording strong-motion instrument in place of existing force-balance accelerometers. The proposed instrument would be comparable to a low-gain version of existing broadband seismometers. Using a large suite of Earth signals, we compare such a hypothetical long-period low-gain velocity seismometer (with a clipping level set to ±5 m/s) with the existing ±2 g clipping Kinemetrics FBA-23 accelerometer. We show that there are significant advantages in the deployment of the proposed instrument over an accelerometer.