Seismic monitoring of urban activity in Barcelona during the COVID-19 lockdown

Diaz, Jordi; Ruiz, Mario; Jara, José-Antonio

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-725-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-725-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Social seismology – the effect of COVID-19 lockdown measures...

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-725-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

26 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 26 Mar 2021

Seismic monitoring of urban activity in Barcelona during the COVID-19 lockdown

Jordi Diaz, Mario Ruiz, and José-Antonio Jara

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-725-2021-supplement

Data sets

Catalan Seismic Network Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/CA

Seismic data for the AM network Raspberry Shake Community https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/AM

Model code and software

ObsPy: A bridge for seismology into the scientific Python ecosystem L. Krischer, T. Megies, R. Barsch, M. Beyreuther, T. Lecocq, C. Caudron, and J. Wassermann https://doi.org/10.1088/1749-4699/8/1/014003

SeismoRMS - A simple Python/Jupyter Notebook package for studying seismic noise changes Version 1.0 T. Lecocq, F. Massin, C. Satriano, M. Vanstone, and T. Megies https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3820046

Short summary

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the city of Barcelona was covered by a network of 19 seismometers. The results confirm that the quieting of human activity during lockdown has resulted in a reduction of seismic vibrations. The different lockdown phases in Barcelona are recognized consistently at most of the seismic stations. Our contribution demonstrates that seismic noise can be used as a free and reliable tool to monitor human activity in urban environments.