Identification of anthropogenic activities interference in the seismic catalog for Banat and Danubian region, Romania

Abstract Banat and Danubian regions are among the most active zones in terms of crustal seismicity in Romania. Even though active seismic monitoring started in the early 20th century, the data sets got more performant with the development and expansion of seismic network monitoring in the late 1970’s. One particularity regarding seismic data acquisition is that in many cases anthropogenic activity, such as mining and quarry exploitation, interferes with natural seismicity. We aim to bring forward a series of data extracted from the ROMPLUS catalog to identify anthropogenic interference. To this aim, we propose a procedure based on multiple discrimination criteria, such as local time of event occurrence, magnitude, location concerning the nearest exploitation site, depth, and P wave input analysis (polarity and waveform). Identifying and filtering the anthropogenic events from the catalog will result in better imaging and characterizing of the natural seismic phenomenon in Banat and Danubian zones, improving the regional seismic hazard assessment this way.