In order to accept your passive-source data for archiving please comply with the procedures and standards below. PASSCAL staff are available to assist you with meeting the requirements of archiving your SEED data as stated in the PASSCAL Data Delivery Policy. Regarding the archiving of SEED data, the policy may be summarized in two points: 1. Data should be archived as soon as practical after data retrieval during service runs and 2. for experiments with five or more stations, at least one station's data must be designated as unrestricted with respect to IRIS DMC data requests.
If you are utilizing our documentation (RT-130, Q330) and Boulder Real Time Technology Inc. (BRTT) Antelope software the remaining requirements discussed below are addressed in detail. Following the suggestions in these documents will ensure these requirements are met.
Data must be in SEED format. The mini-seed (SEED data-only) volumes may be written in 512 byte, 1KB or 4 KB record lengths, however the dataless SEED volume must be written in 4 KB records. SEED data, by definition, is big endian, therefore we only accept big endian word order data.
The SEED format data files are to be organized by station-channel-days, that is, a given file will contain a day's data from one channel at a given station. Strictly speaking, these files need not start nor end exactly at 00:00:00 UTC, as typically there is some “spill-over” of data into the following day when writing fixed-sized data records. These station-channel-day files are to follow the naming convention illustrated by this example:
file: OR011.XC..BHZ.2008.275
where: OR011 is the SEED station name
XC is the SEED network code
BHZ is the SEED channel
2008 is the year
275 is the day of year
Note the absence of the SEED location code, hence the consecutive periods between XC and BHZ. If a location code is utilized in your data simply place it between these two periods; e.g. for a location code of 01 the file name should look like this: OR011.XC.01.BHZ.2008.275.
The meta-data or information describing the instrumentation and site which recorded data must be appropriately defined within the dataless SEED volume. BRTT's Antelope software package, available to IRIS member institutions, is a convenient way to generate a dataless SEED volume. It allows you to completely describe typical PASSCAL-equipped stations with relative ease utilizing prepared sensor and datalogger information, leaving the site-specific meta-data to the user (e.g. latitude, longitude, elevation, site name, channel codes, channel orientations, etc)).
All data are to be archived: seismic and (datalogger dependent) state of health, administrative and log channels.
After you have complied with these procedures and standards you may submit your data to PASSCAL for review (compliance with SEED format and conventions) and archiving at the IRIS DMC.
