A Proposed Velocity Model Applied for Banat and Danubian Seismic Zones

Banat and Danubian regions are among the most significant earthquakeprone areas in Romania for the seismic activity in the crust. To have a reliable image and characterization of the local seismicity based on improved localization parameters of the seismic events, it is crucial to have at our disposal a proper and optimized velocity model for P and S waves as realistic as possible. The recent increase of the data input due to the improvement in seismic stations coverage and quality of recording signals allows us to enhance the requirements regarding the quality and statistics of travel time readings and implicitly the optimization of the regional structural model. The main goal of the present work is to improve the existing 1-D velocity model in the area (TIM21) and to analyze how the new optimized model (TIM24) modifies the seismicity configuration in the Banat and Danubian regions. To this aim, we relocated the seismic events with the new 1-D optimum velocity model and the Joint Hypocenter Determination technique (JHD) over 500 events with high-quality waveforms, recorded between 2014 and 2023.