# Proposal for a System Model for Offline Seismic Event Detection in Colombia
## 1 Introduction  
Earthquakes have been one major concern to societies around the world. Earthquakes are a consequence of earth tectonics, which cause intercontinental plate drifts. Deformation energy is stored along the plates. Once one or more fault lines exhaust their elastic deformation capacity, rupture occurs and the stored energy is released as seismic waves, propagating along with the earth's crust. Depending on the amount of energy released and the depth of rupture, seismic waves can hit civil infrastructure, causing major impacts. Such events as in Sumatra (Indonesia, 2004), Haiti (2010), and Tohoku (Japan, 2011) are proof of how devastating can earthquakes be over human infrastructure and society as well. In Colombia, the Armenia earthquake (1999, Mw 6.2) is referenced as the worst seismic event for the country, which forced the government to call for an updating of the existing design and construction code. The resulting document was introduced into the Colombian legislation, making it a mandatory practice among civil infrastructure designers and constructors (1; 2).  
Earthquake engineering is a branch of engineering born to reduce the effects of earth seismicity. The approaches that earthquake engineering take can be seen from two perspectives: a study of the seismic phenomena and a study of the structural response after the seismic event. Research in earthquake engineering has increased in depth as new materials and computational power have been conceived. Simple techniques for the characterization of earthquake events can be used intensively in an attemptto formulate methodologies that provide people with a time frame to evacuate civil infrastructure during significant seismic events. However, current methodologies involving computational power deal with limitations in storage capacity (storage of seismic traces and raw data), processing capabilities (multichannel seismic acquisition), and lack of compatibility and integration of software resources, adding difficulties for the implementation of a successful seismic event detection technique [3; 4; 5].  
Few academic research groups in Colombia, including the Colombian Geological Service, dedicate their efforts to boost techniques and methodologies focused on the seismic phenomena. Most of the research efforts aim toward a better understanding of both site seismic and structural responses, while some research has been carried on the understanding of local seismicity. Countries such as Mexico and Chile, both with similar seismic characteristics as Colombia, dedicate their research efforts to improve cities' structural resilience and to improve the social response during seismic events as well. The proposal of this research paper is a system model for offline seismic event detection in Colombia, where a set of integrated modules for reading and processing historical seismic raw data deals with the reduction of the computational costs for the successful detection of seismic events.  
This article structures the proposal of a machine learning-based model for the detection of seismic events as follows: (a) problem statement (seismology and seismic data recording), (b) earthquake detection methodologies (traditional vs. current approaches), (c) seismic detection model proposal (model architecture and modules description), and (d) article conclusions.