RIYADH, 28 December 2003 — A Saudi seismologist, who monitored Friday’s devastating earthquake in Iran, has warned of possible aftershocks, possibly in the southeast of that country.
Abdul Aziz Al-Fayez, in-charge of the Saudi Arabian National Seismographic Network (SANSN) at King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), however, said that Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, would not experience a quake or any aftershocks.
KACST, he said, is the official body for reporting seismic activity in the Kingdom. The last reported earthquake in Saudi Arabia occurred in Tabuk n 1995 and the shocks felt at that time were measured below three on the Richter scale.
SANSN, which is one of the best quake monitoring networks in the world, enables local scientists to advise the Saudi government about earthquakes and quake-related problems. The network also gathers information about high-risk zones within the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia, however, is considered to be a very stable country in terms of the occurrence of earthquakes.
SANSN is also capable to differentiate between man-induced movements of the earth and natural movements caused by earthquakes.
A KACST research paper discusses the poor earthquake monitoring facilities in some Arab countries, saying that the broadband data required for analysis of teleseismic receiver functions are almost wholly lacking.
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