Introduction and scope

SeisComP is likely the most widely distributed software package for seismological data acquisition and real-time data exchange over internet. Its data transmission protocol SeedLink became a de facto world standard. The first version of SeisComP was developed for the GEOFON network and further extended within the MEREDIAN project under the lead of GEOFON/GFZ Potsdam and ORFEUS. Originally SeisComP was designed as a high standard fully automatic data acquisition and (near-)real-time data processing tool including quality control, event detection and location as well as dissemination of event alerts. In the context of the GITEWS project (German Indian Ocean Tsunami Early Warning System) additional functionality were implemented to fulfil the requirements of 24/7 early warning control centers. Major changes in the architecture of SeisComP were necessary and many new features result in the upgrade of SeisComP to version 3.0. Important SeisComP releases are shown in Table 1.1. A first prototype of SeisComP3 developed by the GITEWS/GEOFON development group was released in May 2007. SeisComP3 provides the following features:

• data acquisition
• data quality control
• data recording
• real-time data exchange
• network status monitoring
• real-time data processing
• issuing event alerts
• waveform archiving
• waveform data distribution
• automatic event detection and location
• interactive event detection and location
• event parameter archiving
• easy access to relevant information about stations, waveforms and recent earthquakes

The new requirements for early warning purposes made it necessary to adapt the design and architecture of the previous SeisComP. The guidelines for the design of SeisComP3 are:

• implementation of critical functions as standalone modules to guarantee the independence from other functions (e.g. picker, magnitude calculation, interactive analysis)
• easy implementation of custom modules
• independence of hard- and software
• ability of data exchange between different automatic real-time systems
• distribution of modules on several systems
• robust system for rapid and reliable earthquake solutions (especially during seismic crises)