host-picker 2.5.0

High Order STatisics picking algorithms for time-series analysis

HOST

Author: Matteo Bagagli

Date: 11/2025

Version: 2.5.0

What is it?

The HOST acronym stands for High-Order-STatistics seismic pickers. This algorithm took inspiration from the one described in Baillard et al. 2014. The idea behind this package is to provide user-friendly classes for seismic phase picking with skewness and kurtosis characteristic-functions. Originally applied to seismograms by Saragiotis et al., the HOS-CF are able to detect energic transient when the statistical properties of a seismogram (or time series) change abruptly. These CF are calculated on moving window with fixed window.

Measurements of statistical properties in a moving window are suitable for frequency-specific (or expected) transient. For this reason, the picker support a multi-window analysis, in order to collect more information or even increase the quality of detections. Both skewness and kurtosis are calculated with C-routine under the hood, making this package fast and suitable also for realtime picking porpouses.

Standard installation

In general, the usage of virtual env is a good habit for python users. Although this package's dependencies is not For separated conda environment is recommended. Since version v2.4.1 the picker can be found in PyPI repository. Therefore to install the latest stable version you may simply type:

$ pip install host-picker

and be ready to go.

Developer installation

If you want to be updated with the latest patches or even contribute to the project (yes, really your PR are welcome!), fork-me and clone it to your device:

$ git clone https://github.com/mbagagli/host-picker host
$ cd host/
$ # conda activate myenv (optional)
$ pip install .

... et voila'!

Additional infos

Although the package testing is in Travis-CI, you could still install pytest and, inside the cloned folder, type:

$ pytest

to check everything is fine.

The package comes with some jupyter-notebooks (under books subdir) where you can test, understand and customize this picking-algorithm.

Citing

If you use this code for your science, please consider citing it in your final results or manuscripts.

M. Bagagli (2021). mbagagli/host-picker: host-picker. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5575912.

Reference

• Baillard, C., Crawford, W.C., Ballu, V., Hibert, C. and Mangeney, A., 2014. An automatic kurtosis‐based P‐and S‐phase picker designed for local seismic networks. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 104(1), pp.394-409.
• Saragiotis, C.D., Hadjileontiadis, L.J. & Panas, S.M., 2002. PAI-S/K: a robust automatic seismic P phase arrival identification scheme, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 40, 1395–1404.