Toward an African Seismological Data Center

In recent years, Africa was hit by several severe earthquakes. Although the seismic monitoring in Africa has been evolving during the last decade, there has been no joint effort to collect, archive, and process the data, in order to publish earthquake bulletins at the continental or world level. Scientific projects (e.g., IGCP-601–659) dedicated to the seismotectonics and seismic hazard assessment of Africa allowed for the compilation of a database at the continental and regional levels. These research projects have exposed conspicuous aspects of the seismic activity, but also uncovered a severe deficiency of seismic and geophysical equipment and limited capacity throughout the continent. The newly established African Seismological Commission (established in 2014; https://www.afsc-web.org.za/ ) has highlighted the importance of having an African Seismological Data Center (Meghraoui et al., in Episodes 39:9, 2016) in its first General Assembly in Luxor, Egypt, and the second one in Hoceima Morocco. Many scientific, logistic, and financial challenges face this goal. An experiment has been initiated to collect and process data from seismological stations with open access located within Africa and to provide a platform for supplying a generic seismological bulletin using a SeisComp3-based system. The system is a real-time processing server at the Egyptian National Data Center. This system is currently under alpha testing utilizing internal auditing. The second stage will be in the first quarter of 2020 through beta testing after selecting a closed group to test the system’s efficiency and stability to be ready for the validation phase and then commissioning.