Proceedings of the International Symposium on Engineering Lessons Learned fromthe 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, March 1-4, 2012, Tokyo, JapanPRELIMINARY STUDY OF GROUND MOTIONCHARACTERISTICS IN FURUKAWA DISTRICT,JAPAN, BASED ON VERY DENSE
SEISMIC-ARRAY-OBSERVATION
Hiroyuki GOTO1, Hitoshi MORIKAWA2, Masayuki INATANI3, Yumiko OGURA4,Satoshi TOKUE5, Xin-rui ZHANG5, Masahiro IWASAKI6, Masayuki ARAKI7
and Sumio SAWADA8
1Assistant Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan,
goto@catfish.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp
2Associate Professor, Dept. of Built Environment, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan,
morika@enveng.titech.ac.jp
3
Undergraduate Student, School of Global Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan
4
Undergraduate Student, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
5Graduate Student, Dept. of Built Environment, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
6Assistant Manager, Osaki City Office, Japan
7President, aLab Inc., Japan,
8Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan

ABSTRACT: We perform very dense seismic-array-observation in Furukawa district,Japan, where severe damages occurred due to ground motions during the 2011 off thePacific coast of Tohoku earthquake. Low-cost sensors form a seismic array with aninterval of less than 500m, and data is sent to a remote server through the Internet
connection in real time. Ground motion records exhibit non-uniform distribution of PGA
and PGV in Furukawa district.
Key Words: Great East Japan earthquake, Ground motion, Furukawa, Seismic arrayobservation

INTRODUCTIONOn March 11, 2011, off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake (Mw9.0) hit eastern part of the main
land, Japan, and killed more than ten thousand of persons mainly due to great Tsunami. On the other
hand, strong ground motions during the earthquake were observed in almost the whole region in Japanby K-NET, KiK-net organized by NIED, and the other seismometer networks. At least 17 of K-NETand KiK-net stations observed over 980 cm/s2 of PGA in horizontal components, and two stations
observed over 6.5 of seismic intensity on JMA scale. However, damaged areas due to the groundmotion do not correspond to either the large PGA or seismic intensity sites (e.g., Goto and Morikawa,305

2012).
We focus on Furukawa district of Osaki city, where severe residential damages occurred at thedowntown. Ground motion records in the downtown area are available at two stations, MYG006(K-NET) and JMA Furukawa (JMA). The damage level was different between the areas within several
hundred meters from MYG006 and JMA Furukawa stations, which are about 1 km away from eachother. The severe damages were concentrated within the area about 1x1 km2 including the JMA station.
This implies that the ground motion characteristics were not uniform in sub-kilometer scale, and theexisting two stations are not enough to clarify the distribution.
We scattered dozens of low-cost seismometers, namely ITK sensor, around the area about 2x2 km2
in Furukawa district. The observed data are sent to the remote server through the Internet connection
in real time. The seismometers were installed beside the volunteer’s houses introduced by Osaki city
office. The volunteers can access the interactive information service, namely on-line viewer system.
In this study, we analyze the ground motion data of minor earthquakes, and show the differencesof ground motion characteristics as preliminary results.

GROUND MOTIONS DURING 2011 EARTHQUAKE
During off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake, severe structure damages occurred in Furukawa
district of Osaki city, where is located at about 35km north from Sendai city (Fig.1). Furukawa stationof JR Tohoku Shinkansen and JR Riku-u-tosen in located at the center of the district. There are four
seismic stations, K-NET MYG006, JMA Furukawa, Furukawa Gas, and NILIM Furukawa. However,record during the main shock at Furukawa Gas was unfortunately missed (Goto et al., 2011). K-NET
MYG006, JMA Furukawa and NILIM Furukawa observed PGAs of 583cm/s2, 568cm/s2, and483cm/s2, and the seismic intensities on Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) scale of 6.1, 6.2 and 6.1,
respectively.

Fig. 1 Location of Furukawa district and distribution of seismic intensity on JMA scale306

Damage distribution based on the reconnaissance immediately after the main shock is reported inGoto and Morikawa (2012). Figure 2 shows the details of damage distribution and the location ofseismic stations, K-NET MYG006 and JMA Furukawa. Furukawa Gas is located at about 1 km westaway from the area, and NILIM Furukawa is located at about 2 km east away from the area. Damages
due to the liquefaction were observed in the western area of JR Furukawa station, and ones due to theground motion were observed in the area neighbor to the liquefaction area.
The damage level was different between the areas within several hundred meters from K-NET
MYG006 and JMA Furukawa stations, which are about 1 km away from each other. The severe
damages were concentrated within the area about 1x1 km2 including the JMA station. We have noclear reasons, e.g., difference of structure types, difference of ground motions, etc. Goto andMorikawa (2012) pointed out the difference of ground motions recorded at K-NET MYG006 and JMAFurukawa. This implies that ground motions are not spatially uniform in the area.fFig. 2 Location of seismic stations, K-NET MYG006 and JMA Furukawa,and significant damages in Furukawa district

VERY DENSE SEISMIC-ARRAY-OBSERVATION
We cannot give more detailed discussion without the actual records of ground motions. In order toquantify the spatial variation of the ground motion characteristics, we develop very dense
seismic-array-observation in the Furukawa district.
We adopt low-cost seismometers, namely ITK sensor, to form the array observation. The sensor
requires AC power supply and Internet connection for data streaming. The original system of ITK
sensor uses the NTP (network time protocol) to synchronize the inner clock. NTP supports enoughaccuracy in a closed network system, however, it is not enough in a case where the packets of NTP
pass through gateway or router. To insure the time accuracy, we modified the ITK system to adjust tothe clock signal from GPS (global positioning system).
We asked for cooperation of citizens living in Furukawa district through Osaki city office. We307

offered the volunteers two terms in order to participate the project: 1) appropriate spaces with AC
power supply and 2) Internet connection. A number of volunteers gradually increase in setting up thesensors. As a result, we have installed 19 sensors during Sep. to Dec., 2011. Most of sensors arelocated inside of 2x2 km2 in Furukawa district, as shown in Fig.3. The interval of sensors is less thanabout 500 m. The dense array is really unique as an application of the seismic sensor network. Someof the sensors are set very closely such as Site F06 and F07. They are located inside of one resident
premise; one is set on the original ground and the other is set on the improved ground.
The sensors are fixed on a concrete slab using gypsum. The sensor and a few components of thesystem are packed into one box, as shown in Fig.4. All of the sensors are oriented to north, however,
the accuracy of the bearings is not guaranteed. After the installation, we corrected the bearings using
the observed data under an assumption that the seismic waves have very few spatial variations in low
frequency components.
The observed data is sent to remote sever successionally through the Internet connection. The data
are stored as one-minute binary files. Therefore, we can access the real-time data without picking up
the storage data at the actual places.

Fig. 3 Sensor locations in Furukawa district.

Fig. 4 Appearance of sensor and system components.

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IMPLEMENTATION OF ON-LINE VIEWER SYSTEM
In compensation for the volunteer, we provide pseudo real-time information of seismic intensity
through an on-line viewer system, which is developed using the real-time data sent from the local ITKsensors.
The real-time data is stored as one-minute binary files, as mentioned above. Seismic intensities on
JMA scale corresponding to the one-minute data are calculated in every one-minute. The process isregistered on job scheduler in a main server. If more than half of sensors observe the intensity over 0.0,
the process turns on a flag of event trigger. At the same time, another process start to capture the datafrom one-minute ahead of the trigger minutes until one-minutes behind of the time when more thanhalf of sensors observes less than 0.0. The process adds the detected event to file, namely event list file,and also the intensities of each sensor to another file, namely intensity list file, generated in JSON(JavaScript Object Notation) format.
On-line viewer system displays the distribution of seismic intensities on the Google Maps (Fig.5).
Initially, it displays the distribution corresponding to the last event, and users can rewind at most 100events. The system asynchronously controls the display depending on user actions by using Google
Maps API and the technique of Ajax.
The system is available to access from Web browsers. Volunteers can view the intensity
distribution as the same with the usual Web site. When the sensors observe the event, the display isautomatically updated within one-minute.

Fig. 5 On-line viewer system displaying the distribution of seismic intensities.

OBSERVED DATA
A number of events detected by the above system are over 100 until the end of Jan. 2012, whereas
records at K-NET MYG006 for all of the events are not available. After selecting efficient S/N datafrom the records at MYG006, only 22 of them are available.
We compare PGA and PGV observed at each sensor and K-NET MYG006. Figure 6 show PGAand PGV ratios relative to MYG006 in horizontal components. Points correspond to each event, andthe error bars indicate the range in standard deviations of log(PGA ratio) and log(PGV ratio),respectively. Amplifications of PGA and PGV depend on the sensor locations. Especially, F03, F09,and F12 indicate less, whereas F02, F04, F05, F08, and F14 indicate larger PGA and PGV relative to309

those at MYG006.
We focus on two significant events observed in the array: #E1 on Dec. 10th, 2011 and #E2 on Jan.
st1 , 2012. Figure 7 show accelerograms in East-West component of the two events. #E1 (Mj4.7) is thelargest aftershock of the Tohoku earthquake after installation of the array, and #E2 (Mj7.0) isdeep-focus earthquake with the depth of 400km. The durations and envelopes are similar independentof the sensors, whereas the phases are different. Figure 8 shows Fourier amplitudes of theaccelerograms in EW component during #E2. This clearly shows the difference of sensor performancein low frequency component. This implies that ITK sensors do not guarantee the performance lower
than 0.3Hz.
Figure 9 show the spectrum ratio in horizontal components of F01-F19 sites relative to F17 site.
The records at F17 are assumed to be almost same with the records at K-NET MYG006 because F17
is located close to MYG006 in a distance of about 65m. Spectrum ratios for both events are similar toeach other. It implies that the spectrum ratio almost corresponds to the relative site amplification
because the site amplification is independent of the hypocenter location. Peak frequencies of thespectrum also vary depending on the sensor locations. Significant peaks around 3Hz are recognized at
F01, F02, F04, F05, F06, F07, F08 and F14.
The differences of the spectrum ratios reflect the differences of shallow subsurface structures. We
have just started to construct the model to satisfy the spectrum ratios.

Fig. 6 PGA and PGV ratios to K-NET MYG006.

310Fig. 7 Accelerograms in East-West component of #E1 and #E2.

Fig.8 Fourier amplitudes of accelerograms in EW components during #E2.

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Fig.9 H/H spectrum ratios of F01-F19 sites relative to F17 site.

CONCLUSION
We developed very dense seismic-array-observation in Furukawa district, where severe residential
damages occurred at the downtown. Sensors were distributed with an interval of less than 500m.
Observed PGA and PGV have a spatial variation, and differ from those at K-NET MYG006.
We start to analyze the observed data to estimate the spatial variation of subsurface structure, andperform geophysical surveys, e.g., microtremor observations and gravity surveys. The results will bepresented in near future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thanks to National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention providing records
of ground motion at K-NET stations, and volunteers participating in this projects in Furukawa district.

REFERENCES
Goto, H., Morikawa, H., and Kuwata, Y. (2011). “Estimation of ground motion at Furukawa Gas
during 2011 Tohoku-oki Earthquake”, Proc. of 31st JSCE Earthquake Engineering Conference,
1-010, 1-7 (in Japanese with English abstract).
Goto, H. and Morikawa H. (2012). “Ground motion characteristics during the 2011 off the Pacificcoast of Tohoku Earthquake”, Soils and Foundation, submitted.
IT-Kyoshin Kei Research Group (2010).
http://wwweic.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ITKyoshin/Kenkyukai/index.html

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