Assessment of earthquake location uncertainties for the design of local seismic networks

The ability to estimate earthquake source locations, along with the appraisal of relevant uncertainties, is paramount in monitoring both natural and human-induced micro-seismicity. For this purpose, a monitoring network must be designed to minimize the location errors introduced by geometrically unbalanced networks. In this study, we first review different sources of errors relevant to the localization of seismic events, how they propagate through localization algorithms, and their impact on outcomes. We then propose a quantitative method, based on a Monte Carlo approach, to estimate the uncertainty in earthquake locations that is suited to the design, optimization, and assessment of the performance of a local seismic monitoring network.