Building the seismic monitoring infrastructure in southern Main Ethiopian Rift (Arba Minch Area)

The tectonic activity of the Main Ethiopian Rift is one of the most severe geohazards for the surrounding areas. It is responsible not only for earthquakes, but also for other tectonic-related phenomena as could be landslides or rock falls and subsequent damage of settlements and infrastructure. Due to the favorable climate and living conditions the whole area has an extremely high population density. Therefore, the potential risk for endangered population is extremely severe. Although the natural hazards still cannot be predicted even by most up to date techniques, their impact on population can be mitigated when the threats are known. 

 Although there were several attempts to establish seismic monitoring networks in the area, none of them managed to build a network which would be (i) permanent and (ii) meet the current standards in terms of data availability, data formats, data recovery rate, etc. Therefore, The Institute of rock structure and mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences plans to upgrade the already existing monitoring points in the area to a more robust technology and widely used seismic data formats. Then data analysis and seismic hazard estimation could be readily provided in following projects not only by project team but by any seismological group worldwide. 

The project aims to establish a generally accessible database of seismological data which will be consequently used for research and seismic hazard estimation by a global scientific community. The main activities of the project will be upgrade of three seismic monitoring sites in the broad Arba Minch area and establishment of data archive in the Arba Minch University and in the Czech Republic. When the quality of seismic data will be verified, they can be published through a global datacenters.