Seismological services of the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources,Geology and Geophysics

The Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics provides seismological services which complement those provided by several other agencies.The services comprise the operation of 20 seismograph stations in continental Australia, and the operation of regional data centres for earthquakes and strong earth-motion data. The ambit of the data centres includes BMR stations in Antarctica and Papua New Guinea, and foreign stations in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Most of the data are lodged at World Data Centres, and the remainder are available from the BMR national centre.The combined Australian network has provided data at a regional level only for about the last twenty years. These have however, been sufficient to show that although seismicity is low it is not insignificant, and that there are several areas where damaging earthquakes can be expected to recur at 50-year intervals; about 500 Australian earthquakes are located annually.Complete national location capability does not extend below Richter magnitude 4, and it is unlikely that significant improvements can be expected in the near future. In most of the areas where earthquake risk is important from a civil standpoint the detection capability is about magnitude 3. For the other more remote areas advanced techniques based on unattended seismometers and satellite telemetry will probably be needed to attain the same capability.