=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2984/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=Russian-Mongolian scientific initiative for assessing the seismic hazards of Baikal region and Mongolia (short paper)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2984/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-2984
|authors=Igor V. Bychkov,Viacheslav V. Paramonov,Gennadiy M. Ruzhnikov,Andrey A. Mikhailov,Roman K. Fedorov,Anatoly V. Klyuchevskii,Vladimir M. Dem'yanovich,Sodnomsambuu Demberel
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/itams/BychkovPRMFKDD21
}}
==Russian-Mongolian scientific initiative for assessing the seismic hazards of Baikal region and Mongolia (short paper)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2984/paper14.pdf
Russian-Mongolian scientific initiative for assessing
the seismic hazards of the Baikal region and
Mongolia
Igor V. Bychkov1 , Viacheslav V. Paramonov1,2 , Gennadiy M. Ruzhnikov1 ,
Andrey A. Mikhailov1 , Roman K. Fedorov1,2 , Anatoly V. Klyuchevskii3 ,
Vladimir M. Dem’yanovich3 and Sodnomsambuu Demberel4
1
Matrosov Institute for System Dynamics and Control Theory, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk,
Russia
2
Institute of Mathematics and Information Technologies, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia
3
Institute of Earth’s crust of SB RAS, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
4
Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics of Mongolian Academy of Sciences: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Abstract
The territories of the Baikal Region and Mongolia belong to the areas with evaluated seismic activity. In
turn, these territories are at heightened risk of potentially damaging events for human socio-economic
activity. Consequently, seismic activity recording and forecasting would allow us to minimise possible
damages. These issues require collecting and processing large volumes of heterogeneous data. In
order to effectively process such datasets, it would be necessary to use state-of-the-art information
technologies and expandable analytical systems. Such systems should have a set of tools to enable
collection, generation, transformation, visualisation and analysis of data. However, while implementing
products of these types, developers, normally tend to use low-level tools for programming (various
general-purpose programming languages and standard DBMS capabilities). On the other hand, developers
tend to create highly specialised systems that are closely related to a specific automation object and
focus on certain data structures. The paper considers an approach to the development of an information-
analytical system as an infrastructure element for assessing the seismic hazard of large lithospheric
blocks of the Baikal region and Mongolia.
Keywords
Information technologies, information and analytical system, services, spatial data, seismicity, seismic
hazards modelling
1. Introduction
Baikal territory and Mongolia belongs to the territories of high seismic activity [1, 2]. The
assessment and forecast of seismicity in the region plays a great role in the planning of different
Information Technologies: Algorithms, Models, Systems
Envelope-Open bychkov@icc.ru (I. V. Bychkov); slv@icc.ru (V. V. Paramonov); rugnikov@icc.ru (G. M. Ruzhnikov);
mikhailov@icc.ru (A. A. Mikhailov); fedorov@icc.ru (R. K. Fedorov); akluchev@crust.irk.ru (A. V. Klyuchevskii);
vmdem@mail.ru (V. M. Dem’yanovich); demberel@iag.as.mn (S. Demberel)
Orcid 0000-0002-1765-0769 (I. V. Bychkov); 0000-0002-4662-3612 (V. V. Paramonov); 0000-0002-1317-9180
(G. M. Ruzhnikov); 0000-0003-4057-4511 (A. A. Mikhailov); 0000-0002-2944-7522 (R. K. Fedorov);
0000-0002-1901-4985 (A. V. Klyuchevskii); 0000-0002-1023-0075 (S. Demberel)
© 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
Workshop
Proceedings
http://ceur-ws.org
ISSN 1613-0073
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
economic activities. At present, scientific institutions, engineering companies, departments
of regional divisions of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation and
Mongolia, territorial authorities, and management agencies all create and use large volumes
of spatial and thematic data of hazardous natural processes, earthquakes etc. Normally, these
datasets are localised and not linked with each other. In turn, it makes it difficult to use them
collaboratively. In order to solve this challenge, it is necessary to significantly modernise the
territorial management systems through introduction of the state-of-the art in the field of
modelling of hazardous natural processes, earthquakes, modern information and telecommu-
nications technologies and services for processing, searching, storing, and transmitting the
information.
All the above justifies the urgency of creating distributed service-oriented information
and analytical system (IAS) for zoning of the territories with seismic hazards. This system
uses modern standards of software interaction, database application models and tools for
spatial data analysis. Features of the developed system include services provide processing
of large volumes of heterogeneous thematic data of monitoring. The services are a complex
of interrelated mathematical models of earthquakes and predicting their consequences using
modern information and telecommunications infrastructure.
According to the state-of-the art understanding of geophysical properties, the majority of
strong earthquakes are concentrated on the boundaries of lithospheric plates due to large and
mobile fault systems framing these plates. However, seismicity and strong earthquakes are quite
often realised far from the plate boundaries, especially in continental intraplate regions, in which
there are fault structures inherited from previous tectonic episodes and stages and activated
at present. In the intraplate Mongol-Baikal region, according to the scale of development and
length, there are general (length L>80 km), regional (L=35-80 km) and local (L<35 km) faults. In
the fault zones of this hierarchy, large paleoseismodislocations and paleoseismostructures have
been identified, which occurred during strong and catastrophic earthquakes with a magnitude
up to 9.0. In the Baikal region, general faults are deep structures with a backstage structure
and pronounced Cenozoic activation. The structures have a predominant north-eastern and
sublatitudinal strike and determine the orientation of individual connectivity of the Baikal Rift
System (BRS) and the largest depressions. Regional faults form a large group of faults with a
predominance of discharges oriented along the general strike of the BRS. Local faults, mainly of
Cenozoic origin, determine the internal structure of depressions. In the zones of general faults
of the Baikal region, earthquakes with a magnitude higher than 8.0 have occurred in historical
times. On the territory of Mongolia, the general fault structures include the components of
the system of deep lineaments of Central Asia: the Mongol-Okhotsk-Bolnai fault, the Main
Mongolian-Bogdinsky fault, the Western Mongol-Altai-Fuyun fault, the Eastern Mongol-Altai-
Kobda fault zone. It should be noted that fault structures and realised earthquakes are in a certain
relationship: rare strong earthquakes occur in some large faults, and a large number of less
significant seismic tremors occur on numerous small faults. Therefore, the main faults and fault
structures make it possible to characterise the general structure and energy of seismotectonic
deformation of the lithosphere of the Mongol-Baikal region. At the same time, it should be
emphasised that earthquakes with different types of movement in the focus are formed in the
fields of tectonic stresses of the Baikal region and southwestern and central Mongolia. Thus, in
the BRS, these are mainly normal and oblique-normal shocks, whereas in Mongolia — strike-slip
and thrust shocks. This difference is confirmed by field observations of geological seismogenic
structures and physical modelling. The modelling techniques and approaches are used in the
created IAS.
From the points outlined above, it is apparent that there is a need for distributed information-
analytical system that has tools for uploading and processing spatial data. The system could also
act as a platform for scientific collaboration. For example, scientists would have an opportunity
to create and supplement services that implement the developed methodology.
2. Background
2.1. Motivation
The territories of the Baikal Region and Mongolia are located at the junction of large lithospheric
blocks, which causes the high seismic activity of the region. The assessment of the seismic
potential, including the creation of maps of the energy of seismotectonic deformation of the
lithosphere, is important for the long-term socio-economic development of the region. The
seismic hazard map helps in the estimation of ground acceleration of any location, that is
used by the civil and earthquake engineers in designing buildings and large infrastructure [3].
This justifies the need to monitor and process a large volume of spatio-temporal data on the
seismic activity of the Baikal region and Mongolia over significant time intervals. Also, for the
joint use and integration of data obtained from various sources, it is necessary to carry out
their pre-processing and cleaning [4, 5]. In this regard, the task of creating infrastructure and
technology, supporting the creation of an information and analytical system (IAS) is justified.
Ideally, this kind of IAS should have features for spatial analysis and a set of tools for collecting,
creating, transforming, visualising and analysing data.
Traditionally, when implementing such tools, developers use low-level tools for programming
(various general-purpose programming languages and standard DBMS capabilities) or create
highly specialised systems that are closely related to a specific automation object and focus on
certain data structures. The first point leads to a significant increase in costs at the design stage,
and the second point causes large costs that arise during the maintenance and upgrade of the
IAS.
2.2. Related works
Tasks of assessment and prediction of seismic hazards present significant challenges world-
wide. Especially, there is a demand in regions with high seismicity [3, 6, 7, 8] Many different
information systems based on various models and approaches exist of such tasks. The reason
for this is that each region has its own properties related to seismicity [6, 9].
The paper [10] notes that the Internet is a powerful tool for broadcasting near- and real-time
hazard information to, potentially, an almost global audience. The use of this environment
allows to significantly expand abilities for interaction between interested parties. The use
of distributed service-oriented informational systems based on Internet technologies allows
extending their possibilities. Using standardised services allow providing the distribution and
scalability of IAS.
For example, interoperability between information systems and software packages through
Internet, based on OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) [11] standards, is actively developed
as well. One of the most well-utilised standards for this work is OGC WPS (Web Processing
Service) [11] standard, which unifies the way clients interact with web services that deal with
geospatial data analysis and processing. For instance, it could be the service for raster and
vector data processing, service for geomodeling and statistics. This standard is simple, it defines
metadata distribution and supports long-lasting service execution. These kinds of services are
actively used in tasks of seismic activities analyses [12].
3. Models and methods of seismic hazards estimation
Based on the materials from the “Catalogue of earthquakes of the Baikal Region” and the
“Bulletin of Earthquakes of the Baikal Region”, regional databases on the seismicity of the Baikal
region and faults of the Mongol-Siberian region were created in this research. The databases
are adapted to the solution of the following tasks: “Database of amplitudes, periods, epicentral
distances for earthquakes of the Baikal region” and “Database of faults active in the Cenozoic of
the Mongol-Siberian region”.
In order to refine the models of the medium of seismic wave propagation, a model calculation
of the average dynamic parameters of elastic vibrations of rock soil from earthquakes in the
southern Baikal region was performed for three cities in the south of the Eastern Siberia–Irkutsk,
Angarsk and Usolye-Sibirsky. It is established that:
• If the value of the maximum possible energy class of earthquakes in the southern Baikal
region is assumed to be Kmax=18, then the recurrent intervals of shocks with K=16 will
be about 120 years. The probability of an earthquake of this class occurring in the study
area within 50 years is P=0.34 and is high enough to consider the possibility of such a
shock in the southern Baikal region as real.
• The correlation equations of the seismic source and the energy class of earthquakes are
calculated for the totalities of earthquakes that occurred within the elementary sites with
a size of 1.0°1.0°. On the basis of the equations, the calculations of the average values
of the maximum amplitude and the period of vibrations of the rocky soil in the time
period are performed. Irkutsk, Angarsk and Usolye-Sibirsky. It is established that with
the same energy class of earthquakes, the strongest concussions in Irkutsk, Angarsk and
Usolye-Sibirsky can be caused by tremors from the zone of the Main Sayan Fault.
It is shown that the model with changes in the quality factor of the medium in the form of
a power function weakly corresponds to the laws of attenuation of seismic waves in the
Baikal region. Perhaps, it is necessary to apply a different type of frequency dependence
of the Q-factor of the lithosphere blocks when clarifying the patterns of attenuation of
seismic waves. The close correspondence of the elastic lithosphere model to real data
makes it possible to apply it when evaluating the dynamic parameters of seismic source.
Estimates of recurrent intervals and the probability of large-magnitude earthquakes were
refined, taking into account the influence of clustering seismicity. When calculating these
parameters for the southern Baikal region, it was found that clustering seismicity (aftershock
and swarm sequences of earthquakes) have a significant impact on the assessment of recurrent
intervals and the probability of large-magnitude earthquakes. As in the classical solution of
seismic zoning problems (within the framework of the project, this task sounds like “zoning
of the seismic hazard of large lithospheric blocks”), it is necessary to take into account the
clustering seismic tremors, which are associated induced events and therefore fall out of the
Poisson distribution, within which the estimation of recurrent intervals and the probability of
large-magnitude earthquakes is performed.
We have developed a method for determining the kinematic type of movements in earthquake
seismic source, in which a map of earthquake epicentres of the studied territory is built from
experimental materials of seismic stations spaced on the surface, the kinematic and dynamic
parameters of the earthquake under study are determined from the amplitudes and periods
of seismic vibrations at each seismic station, while the seismic moment is calculated from the
hypocentral distance. Maximum amplitude and period of seismic vibrations on the records of the
body transverse S–wave of each seismic station, according to the data of all seismic stations, a
sample–an array of seismic moments of this earthquake is created, the average seismic moment
of the earthquake and its standard deviation are calculated from the sample–an array of seismic
moments, calibration graphs of the dependence of the logarithm of the seismic moment on the
energy class of earthquakes in the Baikal region with different kinematic types of movement
in the seismic source are set in accordance with the calibration value of the seismic moment
of an earthquake of the same energy class are built, according to the location of the value of
the average seismic moment of an earthquake on the calibration graph, the kinematic type of
movement in the earthquake centre is determined, taking into account the standard deviation.
4. Information-analytical system for estimation of the seismic
hazards of the Baikal region and Mongolia
4.1. Infrastructure of information-analytical system
The institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Mongolian
Academy of Sciences have many years of experience in joint interdisciplinary research in the
field of seismic activity of large lithospheric blocks of the Baikal Region and Mongolia. The
study of seismic activity is a time-consuming process associated with monitoring, accumulation
and processing of a large volume of spatio-temporal data. This serves as the basis for the
introduction of modern information technologies in the study of the problems of the stress-
strain state of the lithosphere and the determination of the size of a potential seismic focus. For
the input, storage, and effective processing of seismic activity data, it is necessary to form an
appropriate infrastructure that ensures the formation of analytical information in a convenient
and visual form. As an infrastructure component, it is proposed to use the geoportal created by
us [13]. The geoportal is the core of the IAS. It is used as an entry point for searching and using
infrastructure services. The geoportal includes services for publishing and creating maps, a
catalogue of geoprocessing services, a subsystem for planning and executing services.
4.2. Information system technologies
Geoportal, as a service-oriented system, is the basis for the formation of the infrastructure for
research of seismic activity in the Baikal and Mongolia regions. It allows us to develop data
processing capabilities almost unlimited, interacting with other distributed services available on
the Internet. The main requirement for these services is their compliance with the WPS — Web
Processing Service standards [14]. This made it possible to define a universal interface to web
services for processing spatial data. Within the framework of the developed IAS, services for
loading and editing, cleaning and storing data are implemented, as well as services for calculating
the density of point objects in regular grid cells, calculating the density of linear objects in
regular grid cells, interpolating point data into regular grid cells by the natural neighbours’
method, etc. As a part of the IAS some of the legacy software for analysing earthquake data,
zoning, and predicting seismic hazard, implemented in the FORTRAN programming language,
were converted in the form of services. This approach allowed us to minimise facilities for
adaptation and usage of legacy models and software.
4.3. Services of the system
For data analysis, we created different WPS services that implement basic methods of analysing
seismic zoning data. For example, WPS services for assessing the influence of the lithosphere
model on the dynamic parameters of ground vibrations from earthquakes in the Southern
Baikal region with spatial analysis functions have been developed. They allow monitoring and
comprehensive analysis of the seismotectonic situation to make decisions on preventing and
minimising risks as a result of dangerous geological processes. An open specialised catalogue of
earthquakes for the tasks of general seismic zoning of the Russian Federation has been uploaded
to the IAS database. Based on this catalogue, a WPS service for assessing the seismic hazard of
the Baikal natural territory based on the macroseismic equation was developed.
Ways of integrating WPS services are also proposed. In particular, the integration of WPS
services is carried out in the form of scripts that determine the sequence of application, the
parameters passed, etc. To develop scripts for WPS services, the JavaScript language is used,
where access to WPS services is performed using special functions. To interpret scripts in
JavaScript and directly access WPS services, a special module has been developed, written in
C++ using the Google V8 JavaScript interpreter.
The organisation of a distributed “cloud” information and computing process with elements
of pluralisation is carried out. The tasks of processing a large amount of data require the
involvement of significant computing resources, which are usually located in different locations.
Thus, computing resources form a distributed computing environment. Such an environment
provides the ability to perform computing and analytical services on various computing nodes.
Processing a large amount of data within the environment requires the organisation of the
computational process, taking into account the heterogeneity of computing nodes and data
transmission. To implement this task, a distributed “cloud” information and computing process
with pluralisation elements was created. The service execution management subsystem is used
as the core, where pluralisation is provided by dividing spatial data along a certain grid and
executing for each cell of the WPS service on a separate computing node, including a remote
one. To deploy WPS services, a cluster of virtual machines on various platforms has been
created and is being used. The use of several platforms is due to different requirements (often
contradictory to each other) for software and hardware platforms for the software tools used
for storing and processing spatial data.
The prototype of the information and analytical system was integrated with Jupyter notebook,
which is the most modern and powerful tool for interactive analysis. It combines program code,
mathematical equations, and visualizations into a single document. The JupyterHub system is
deployed in the cloud environment, which is a multi-user implementation of Jupyter Notebook.
The connection of a data storage system, a catalogue of satellite images, relational data of
geoportals and the allocation of computing resources was carried out. Jupyter Notebook has
been integrated with WPS services. Integration with Jupyter Notebook made it possible to use
the most modern methods of data processing and machine learning in the form of ready—made
program code.
5. Conclusion
The received experience and close Russian-Mongolian scientific cooperation allowed us to
create the prototype of information and analytical systems with spatial analysis functions.
This system provides the ability to use different models for earthquakes occurrences. The IAS
allows the researchers to accumulate different heterogeneous datasets with spatial components
and provide services for their processing. This system is a platform used for seismic hazards
of large lithospheric blocks of the Baikal Region and Mongolia assessing. The platform al-
lows generalising large values of accumulated seismic data, use distributed services for their
processing.
6. Acknowledgements
The results of section 4 were obtained within the framework of the State Assignment of the
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for the project ”Methods and
technologies of cloud-based service-oriented platform for collecting, storing and processing large
volumes of multi-format interdisciplinary data and knowledge based upon the use of artificial
intelligence, model-guided approach and machine learning” (state registration №121030500071-
2). The study in section 3 was partially funded by the RFBR and the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Science, and Sports of Mongolia (project №20-55-44011).
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