Join us for our upcoming branch Annual General Meeting (AGM) and a technical talk by Adam Pascale, Chief Scientist at the Seismology Research Centre
Venue: The Kelvin Club, 14-30 Melbourne Place, Melbourne VIC 3000
Schedule:
6:00 PM - Networking drinks and finger food
6:45 PM - AGM
7:15 PM - Technical talk
President’s Report
Treasurer’s Report
Election of Office Bearers
We'll be making some changes to our committee this year, and are fortunate to have several volunteers already putting their hands up. That said, we are always keen to welcome new faces. If you’re interested in contributing your time, ideas, and energy to help shape the future of ASEG Victoria, we would love to hear from you.
For more information or to nominate, please contact:
Following the AGM, we are pleased to host a presentation titled:
“How anthropogenic seismicity led an earthquake observatory to develop accessible tools and technology”
Adam Pascale – Chief Scientist, Seismology Research Centre
Drawing on decades of experience at the Seismology Research Centre, Adam will explore how earthquake analysis tools have evolved into more accessible, user-friendly platforms, and how advances in usability and automation are lowering barriers to entry without compromising analytical rigour.
Adam Pascale is the Chief Scientist at the Seismology Research Centre (SRC) in Melbourne, Australia, where he has worked for over three decades. After graduating with a BSc in Computer Science at RMIT University, he started working with the University’s SRC in 1991 as a field seismologist and data analyst, working up to a management role when the SRC transitioned to private ownership in 1998.
Adam's design work has guided the development of seismic hardware and software solutions that have significantly improved emergency response time to earthquakes, and that has streamlined the routine workflow for earthquake data analysts and network managers. Adam is also passionate about making the science of seismology accessible to the public, media and to professionals in studying and working in seismology and related fields.
Adam was awarded life membership to the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) in 2025 in recognition of his contribution to that organisation. AEES aims to improve resilience to earthquakes for societal infrastructure by bringing engineers and seismologists together. AEES was formed after the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.
Earthquake waveform data processing is becoming more automated, so the need for routine seismic data processing is starting to fade, but it is still important for those learning seismology to understand the process of how to get from wiggly lines on a screen to an earthquake hypocentre and magnitude solution.
When the Seismology Research Centre (SRC) started in the late 1970s, tools for waveform analysis to determine hypocentre and magnitude required a highly technical knowledge-base in computing and seismology, making it difficult to use for researchers that were new to the field. Our earliest projects involved operating a microseismic network to monitor for reservoir triggered earthquakes, so the volume of data drove us to develop our own tools optimised for that workflow.
Once the software was mature, we wanted it to become a broadly-used STEM tool, so we started by focusing on improving the waveform analysis application, Waves. We added basic magnitude and distance calculation based on globally generic values, and, importantly, made it free to use.
We then undertook a massive redesign to create a graphical user interface for the hypocentre determination program, and integrated it into Waves, bringing professional-grade hypocentre calculation using customisable earth models and magnitude formulae to all users. This change brought drag-and-drop waveform analysis and graphically interactive keyboard-free earthquake parameter calculations to amateur and professional users alike.
The SRC continues use their experience as an active earthquake observatory to develop easy-to-use hardware and software tools to improve the workflows of professionals, and to remove the barriers to entry into earthquake monitoring and analysis for students and early-career seismologists.
