A free-field strong motion network in Taiwan: TSMIP

Abstract

The Central Weather Bureau has implemented the Taiwan Strong Motion Instrumentation Program (TSMIP) to collect high-quality instrumental recordings of strong earthquake shaking. Deployment of the accelerographs started in August 1992, By June 1997, 629 stations had been deployed. Each operating free-field station includes triaxial accelerometers, a digital recording sub-unit, a power supply and a timing system. Since the first installation in August 1992, this network has recorded 2482 earthquakes. The local magnitudes of these earthquakes ranged from 1.7 to 7.1 and thousands of high-quality digital accelerograms were collected. The quality of 16-bit data is shown to be much better than the conventional strong-motion data (either analog or 12-bit digital recordings). These new recordings provide an excellent database for making various earthquake engineering and seismological studies.