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Projecte llegit

Títol: Correlation between earthquakes and ionosphere scintillation measured with GNSS remote sensing techniques

Estudiants que han llegit aquest projecte:

Director/a: PARK, HYUK

Departament: FIS

Títol: Correlation between earthquakes and ionosphere scintillation measured with GNSS remote sensing techniques

Data inici oferta: 20-03-2023     Data finalització oferta: 06-10-2023


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    DG ENG AERO/SIS TEL
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: ERASMUS
 
        Supervisor/a extern: Jiyun Lee
        Institució/Empresa: KAIST
        Titulació del Director/a: Professor
 
Nom del segon director/a (UPC): Adriano Camps
Departament 2n director/a:
 
Paraules clau:
GNSS, Remote Sensing, Ionosphere, Earthquake
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
Objectives:
This project aims to deepen our understanding on the correlation
between earthquakes and ionospheric anomalies. In order to do
this, it will be studied different techniques of GNSS remote
sensing, as well as the theoretical background that backs up the
hypothesis of the correlation between earthquake and ionosphere
scintillation anomalies. The objective of this work not only
relies on a theoretical understanding but also try to prove the
correlation with the use of real data provided by satellite
constellations, in the line of work that has been doing UPC's
Remote Sensing Laboratory.
Methodology:
In order to carry out the objectives of this project there will
be 2 main sections with different methodologies, the theoretical
and the practical part.
For the theoretical chapter of this project, it will be studied
the ionosphere itself and how the rapid movement of the electrons
inside it, the ionospheric scintillation, can affect the GNSS
signals. It will also be studied how earthquakes or other natural
events can affect the ionosphere and scintillation, which backs
up the motivation of this study by opening the possibility to
find a correlation between the two processes mentioned before. In
order to have this description of the ionosphere characteristics
GNSS remote sensing techniques are used, so it will be also
studied how these techniques work. For the theoretical part it
will be used scientific publications and other readings to deepen
the understanding of the concepts mentioned.
As for the practical part, real data provided by the satellite
constellation COSMIC-2 will be used. This data will be first pre-
processed and filtered in order to have datasets with which it is
possible to work with. The main index that is going to be looked
at as a reference of ionospheric anomalies is the S4
scintillation index. There will be a first approximation with
case-by case studies to determine the useful parameters that will
be used as thresholds in the decision if some behavior is
considered an anomaly or not. Then, it will be done a statistical
analysis based on confusion matrices and the Receiver Operating
Characteristic (ROC) curves to demonstrate the potential
relationship between the S4 anomalies and earthquakes. For the
practical part it will be used MATLAB for the data processing.
Expected results:
As for the expected results, it is expected to obtain temporal
and spatial graphs pf case by case studies that show the
correlation that is tried to be shown. Another expected result
are the confusion matrices and ROC curves as a result of the
statistical analysis. With this, it will be tried to back up the
hypothesis of the positive correlation as a general case.
 
Overview (resum en anglès):
The Lithosphere- Atmosphere-Ionosphere coupling models have been widely studied and applied to earthquakes and their precursors. Recently, evidence has been found that electromagnetic phenomena related to earthquakes might produce ionospheric anomalies even before their occurrence. This thesis aims to analyze the correlation between ionospheric scintillation and seismic events such as earthquake precursors, with the hypothesis that there is a positive correlation. Among all the ionospheric indicators, this study analyzes the S4 scintillation index from COSMIC-2 GNSS Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO), to estimate the ionospheric perturbation and identify anomalies. Case studies of earthquakes happening in 2022, as well as a statistical analysis centered on the Coral Sea area, are presented showing positive correlation. In some of the case studies are seen anomalies up to one week before the earthquake. Moreover, in the statistical analysis it is shown a correlation with anomalies happening between 3 and 6 days before the earthquakes and the earthquake itself. A probability of detection of 35.7% and a false alarm rate of 7.1% are obtained. This leads to the conclusion of ionospheric scintillation and seismic activity having a small positive correlation.

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