An End-to-End Earthquake Detection Method for Joint Phase Picking and Association using Deep Learning

TL;DR

This paper presents an end-to-end deep learning method for earthquake detection that jointly performs phase picking and event association, improving overall accuracy over traditional multi-stage workflows.

Contribution

It introduces a novel neural network architecture that processes seismic data from multiple stations simultaneously and incorporates kinematic constraints for better earthquake detection.

Findings

Achieves detection accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art methods.

Effectively picks P- and S-wave arrivals from seismic waveforms.

Successfully generalizes across different velocity models and station geometries.

Abstract

Earthquake monitoring by seismic networks typically involves a workflow consisting of phase detection/picking, association, and location tasks. In recent years, the accuracy of these individual stages has been improved through the use of machine learning techniques. In this study, we introduce a new, end-to-end approach that improves overall earthquake detection accuracy by jointly optimizing each stage of the detection pipeline. We propose a neural network architecture for the task of multi-station processing of seismic waveforms recorded over a seismic network. This end-to-end architecture consists of three sub-networks: a backbone network that extracts features from raw waveforms, a phase picking sub-network that picks P- and S-wave arrivals based on these features, and an event detection sub-network that aggregates the features from multiple stations and detects earthquakes. We use these sub-networks in conjunction with a shift-and-stack module based on back-projection that introduces kinematic constraints on arrival times, allowing the model to generalize to different velocity models and to variable station geometry in seismic networks. We evaluate our proposed method on the STanford EArthquake Dataset (STEAD) and on the 2019 Ridgecrest, CA earthquake sequence. The results demonstrate that our end-to-end approach can effectively pick P- and S-wave arrivals and achieve earthquake detection accuracy rivaling that of other state-of-the-art approaches.