9. Problems Related to Software Versions

This chapter presents a riddle that for the first time I was confronted with when I was working at the gold mines. All was in place, good quality seismic system, and quality seismic data base and professional and experienced staff employed. The last years were good as the mining management was taking advice and had confidence in our data interpretation results. Unexpectedly the seismicity character changed. In practice one would expect that at this point in time the seismic response to the mining process has changed. This usually is bad news as it means change of seismic hazard. This was not the case. The reason was astonishing as it was the new seismic processing software. There were large differences in the seismic parameter values depending on the version of the software. This illustrated how dependent of the contractor the seismic source parameter values can be and really are. This was a direct prove that their values are not the real thing. This problem repeated itself while I was working for the Palabora Mine. Chapter describing this problem is different from the others as it is not about using seismic data to monitor the caving process or the resulting seismic hazard. Here interpretation was to find what are the differences and then decide are they acceptable or no. In the end one wants to know which software to use that is to assess which one results in data that can be explained by application of basic physical rules. To be honest I enjoyed this analysis as it was different from what I was doing. It was a case when I could use different approaches and have some fun.