Next Generation Seismic Source Detection by Computer Vision: Untangling the Complexity of the 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake Sequence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Seismic source locations are fundamental to many fields of Earth and planetary sciences, such as seismology, volcanology and tectonics. However, seismic source detection and location are challenging when events cluster closely in space and time with signals tangling together at observing stations, such as they often do in major aftershock sequences. Though emerging algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) models have made processing high volumes of seismic data easier, their performance is still limited, especially for complex aftershock sequences. In this study, we propose a novel approach that utilizes three‐dimensional image segmentation—a computer vision technique—to detect and locate seismic sources, and develop this into a complete workflow, Source Untangler Guided by Artificial intelligence image Recognition (SUGAR). In our synthetic and real data tests, SUGAR can handle complex, energetic earthquake sequences in near real time better than skillful analysts and other AI and non‐AI based algorithms. We apply SUGAR to the 2016 Kaikōura, New Zealand sequence and obtain five times more events than the analyst‐based GeoNet catalog. The improved aftershock distribution illuminates a continuous fault system with extensive fracture zones beneath the segmented, discontinuous surface ruptures. Our method has broader applicability to non‐earthquake sources and other time series image data sets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".