Sierra
Seismic Monitoring System


Kinemetrics’ Sierra provides rapid information for earthquake mitigation by monitoring seismic events from local, regional and national networks and arrays.

Sierra is based on the Altus recorders to digitize and transmit data over full duplex telemetry links and a PC-based data acquisition and on-line processing system. The system runs under Microsoft Windows to provide a user-friendly environment, making system setup and data display quick and easy.

Sierra offers the advantage of recording seismic events to the Altus recorder’s removable PC memory card when the trigger criteria are met, providing a backup system for the network. The Altus recorder can also be connected to a triaxial force balance accelerometer to provide information about strong ground motion.

Sierra Field Station
At remote sites, the Sierra Field Station consists of seismometers and/or accelerometers, an Altus recorder and a communication interface. 

The Altus recorder converts analog signals from the transducers to digital format and time stamps the data for all channels using the GPS receiver. All of Kinemetrics’ Altus recorders (Etna, K2 or Everest) can be installed at field stations.

The communication interface transfers continuous data to the Sierra Data Center using standard duplex serial interface over radio, telephone or satellite communication links.

Sierra Data Center
The Sierra data center consists of the Data Concentrator, the Real-time data acquisition and processing system, and the off-line analysis system.

The Data Concentrator merges all incoming data streams and forwards them to the Real-time data acquisition and processing system.

The Real-time acquisition and processing system records all the incoming signals and performs seismic event detection using Kinemetrics’ Network Management System (NMS). Hypocenter and magnitude processing is performed automatically after an event has been detected and the information is then graphically displayed on a map.

The off-line computer incorporates the Iaspei and Seisan seismic analysis software packages or the Antelope Seismic Information System (ASIS). Seisan provides a complete set of utilities with a simple database for analyzing earthquake data. A large selection of tools is available for further processing from Seisan and Iaspei including signal spectral parameter determination, seismic moment, azimuth and epicenter plotting. ASIS uses the relational database (RDBMS) formalism and the CSS v. 3.0 schema for information organization. ASIS comes with a complete set of tools for processing seismic data and runs on the Sun Microsystems’ Solaris operating system on both SPARC and Intel architectures.