HYPOSAT – An Enhanced Routine to Locate Seismic Events

Abstract

 — A program package, called HYPOSAT, has been under development that attempts to use the maximum information possible to estimate the hypocenter of a seismic source. The standard input parameters can be used: arrival times of first and later onsets with backazimuths and ray parameters (or apparent velocities). In addition, travel-time differences between different phases observed at the same station can be optionally used. The observed standard deviations are used to weight all input parameters and the inversion is done with a generalized matrix inversion code.¶A starting solution with a priori uncertainties can be calculated as the intersection of all backazimuth observations. If S observations are also available, a preliminary origin time is estimated using Wadati's approach to estimate a source time.¶Global earth models and user-defined horizontally layered local or regional models can be used alone or together to locate seismic events. To gain the best result from all input data, observations of all seismic phases as defined in the IASPEI91 tables can be inverted. Station corrections and corrections for phases with reflection points at the earth's surface can be applied by using local velocity structures.