The Seismic Monitoring and Research Group (SMRG) at the University of Malta, the research group which maintains the Malta Seismic Network – the only facility in Malta that monitors earthquake activity around the Maltese Islands, welcomes two new members.
Matthew Agius and Luca Laudi will be joining Dr Sebastiano D’Amico and Prof. Pauline Galea to work on the new exciting project SIGMA: Seismic Imaging of Groundwater for Maltese Aquifers.
SIGMA will use a novel approach towards imaging the spatial and temporal characteristics of our aquifers. Since seismic noise is made up of continuous vibrations of the ground surface and shallow rock layers due to natural and anthropogenic sources, these vibrations move in all directions and through signal processing techniques, the team is hoping to validate this data as an additional tool for groundwater management.
Luca Laudi has recently graduated with B.Sc. (Hons) from the Institute of Earth Systems - University of Malta. He has been awarded the Award for Academic Excellence. "I am thrilled to be on the SIGMA team and to continue researching on groundwater monitoring, a natural resource that is critical to the Maltese Islands."
Matthew Agius holds a Ph.D. in seismology. He has vast experience with installing and running seismic networks and with analysing seismic data to image deep structures inside the Earth. "SIGMA presents a new and exciting challenge. Seismologists typically work on earthquake-related research; however, for SIGMA, we will be using seismic noise to map the very shallow structure beneath Malta and look for water-related changes in the rocks."
Project SIGMA is financed by the Energy & Water Agency Malta under the National Strategy for Research and Innovation in Energy and Water (2021-2030).