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Experiment Support
For any type of experiment, PASSCAL personnel assist PIs
throughout the project to solve technical problems, including
repairing instruments on site, troubleshooting problems
remotely via telephone, and arranging shipments of replacement
equipment (see Appendix F).
In passive-source experiments, PASSCAL personnel arrive
shortly after the equipment arrives in the field. They are
responsible for testing and repairing any equipment that
may have been damaged during shipping, and providing
in situ training for field personnel. PASSCAL staff usually
participate in some initial station deployments to provide
additional PI training. Once this initial support is finished,
the PIC will continue to support the PI during the experiment,
either on site or remotely, as necessary.
PASSCAL staff normally accompany active-source groups
for their entire duration to ensure time-critical instrument
deployments, to make repairs on instruments in the field,
and to assist in the download of data and organization of
metadata.
Software Support
The PASSCAL software suite comprises programs written
over the last two decades by PASSCAL staff and the wider
community. The primary function of PASSCAL software
is to assist with collecting, performing quality control, and
transforming data into optimal formats for analysis and
archiving with the IRIS DMC. The software is primarily
designed to support dataloggers provided by the PIC but has
been used by many international institutions not associated
with IRIS or PASSCAL. There are over 150 fully open-source
programs ranging from simple command line programs, to
graphical user interface scripts, to fully graphical data viewing
programs. The suite also contains many user-contributed
programs for performing tasks such as reading and writing
miniSEED files and converting raw data to SEGY format.
In-house
Inventory/Maintenance
Database
Lab Tools
Data Flow
Purchasing
Forms
Software Development
Team
Waveform QC
State-of-Health
Analysis
Archive Formatting
of data & metadata
Datalogger
Interfacing
User Community
Data Transfer
Tools
Field-Specific QC
Tools
Datalogger Offload
Tools
Figure 29: PASSCAL software development serves both PASSCAL staff and the user community.
Development both in-house and user-community software is a dynamic process
reliant on user feedback.
Functionality of the PASSCAL software suite
can be roughly broken into two partially
overlapping categories (Figure 29): in-house
and user-community software. In-house
software includes bench-testing utilities
that allow PASSCAL staff to quickly and
efficiently test multiple dataloggers and to
update associated inventory and maintenance
database. User-community software includes
quality control code geared toward field and
archiving applications. Examples of widely
used software with overlapping in-house
and user-community uses include waveform
viewing tools, state-of-health analysis tools,
and format conversion routines. PASSCAL
provides pre-configured field computers containing
the PASSCAL software suite as well as
commercial programs that may be needed for
a particular experiment.
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