A quantitative assessment of GeoNet earthquake location quality in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Tens of thousands of earthquakes are located by GeoNet across Aotearoa every year. However, spatial variability – both in station coverage and earthquake distributions – produce heterogeneity in earthquake location quality throughout the GeoNet catalogue. Here we consider simple, established criteria (including station azimuthal coverage, minimum station distance, phase arrival coverage and fixed location criteria) to score earthquakes on a network location Quality Score (QS) scale of QS0 (unconstrained) to QS6 (best constrained). Significant variation in QS exists nationwide; 48% and 20% of earthquakes score QS6 for the North and South Islands respectively. The Hawkes Bay region scores highest (68% QS6) closely followed by other Hikurangi regions. However, several regions score extremely poorly, with Fiordland, West Coast, Nelson, Otago‐Southland and Auckland‐Northland regions having ≤5% QS6 events and >75% of events scoring QS3 or lower. Low QS mostly arises from the failure of minimum distance criteria, whereby the closest station is too far from the earthquake to provide sufficient depth control. Our analysis quantitatively assesses the impact of network heterogeneity on GeoNet earthquake catalogue location quality to inform end users. This work also provides motivation for the expansion of the weak‐motion network in critically under‐instrumented regions, especially those with high seismic hazard.