PROTOCOL TO THE COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR TEST-BAN TREATY

1. The International Monitoring System shall comprise monitoring facilities as set out in Article IV, paragraph 16, and respective means of communication.

2. The monitoring facilities incorporated into the International Monitoring System shall consist of those facilities specified in Annex 1 to this Protocol. The International Monitoring System shall fulfil the technical and operational requirements specified in the relevant operational manuals.

3. The Organization, in accordance with Article II, shall, in cooperation and consultation with the States Parties, with other States, and with international organizations as appropriate, establish and coordinate the operation and maintenance, and any future agreed modification or development of the International Monitoring System.

4. In accordance with appropriate agreements or arrangements and procedures, a State Party or other State hosting or otherwise taking responsibility for International Monitoring System facilities and the Technical Secretariat shall agree and cooperate in establishing, operating, upgrading, financing, and maintaining monitoring facilities, related certified laboratories and respective means of communication within areas under its jurisdiction or control or elsewhere in conformity with international law. Such cooperation shall be in accordance with the security and authentication requirements and technical specifications contained in the relevant operational manuals. Such a State shall give the Technical Secretariat authority to access a monitoring facility for checking equipment and communication links, and shall agree to make the necessary changes in the equipment and the operational procedures to meet agreed requirements. The Technical Secretariat shall provide to such States appropriate technical assistance as is deemed by the Executive Council to be required for the proper functioning of the facility as part of the International Monitoring System.

5. Modalities for such cooperation between the Organization and States Parties or States hosting or otherwise taking responsibility for facilities of the International Monitoring System shall be set out in agreements or arrangements as appropriate in each case.

6. Each State Party undertakes to cooperate in an international exchange of seismological data to assist in the verification of compliance with this Treaty. This cooperation shall include the establishment and operation of a global network of primary and auxiliary seismological monitoring stations. These stations shall provide data in accordance with agreed procedures to the International Data Centre.

7. The network of primary stations shall consist of the 50 stations specified in Table 1-A of Annex 1 to this Protocol. These stations shall fulfil the technical and operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual for Seismological Monitoring and the International Exchange of Seismological Data. Uninterrupted data from the primary stations shall be transmitted, directly or through a national data centre, on-line to the International Data Centre.

8. To supplement the primary network, an auxiliary network of 120 stations shall provide information, directly or through a national data centre, to the International Data Centre upon request. The auxiliary stations to be used are listed in Table 1-B of Annex 1 to this Protocol. The auxiliary stations shall fulfill the technical and operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual for Seismological Monitoring and the International Exchange of Seismological Data. Data from the auxiliary stations may at any time be requested by the International Data Centre and shall be immediately available through on-line computer connections.

9. Each State Party undertakes to cooperate in an international exchange of data on radionuclides in the atmosphere to assist in the verification of compliance with this Treaty. This cooperation shall include the establishment and operation of a global network of radionuclide monitoring stations and certified laboratories. The network shall provide data in accordance with agreed procedures to the International Data Centre.

10. The network of stations to measure radionuclides in the atmosphere shall comprise an overall network of 80 stations, as specified in Table 2-A of Annex 1 to this Protocol. All stations shall be capable of monitoring for the presence of relevant particulate matter in the atmosphere. Forty of these stations shall also be capable of monitoring for the presence of relevant noble gases upon the entry into force of this Treaty. For this purpose the Conference, at its initial session, shall approve a recommendation by the Preparatory Commission as to which 40 stations from Table 2-A of Annex 1 to this Protocol shall be capable of noble gas monitoring. At its first regular annual session, the Conference shall consider and decide on a plan for implementing noble gas monitoring capability throughout the network. The Director-General shall prepare a report to the Conference on the modalities for such implementation. All monitoring stations shall fulfil the technical and operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual for Radionuclide Monitoring and the International Exchange of Radionuclide Data.

11. The network of radionuclide monitoring stations shall be supported by laboratories, which shall be certified by the Technical Secretariat in accordance with the relevant operational manual for the performance, on contract to the Organization and on a fee-for-service basis, of the analysis of samples from radionuclide monitoring stations. Laboratories specified in Table 2-B of Annex 1 to this Protocol, and appropriately equipped, shall, as required, also be drawn upon by the Technical Secretariat to perform additional analysis of samples from radionuclide monitoring stations. With the agreement of the Executive Council, further laboratories may be certified by the Technical Secretariat to perform the routine analysis of samples from manual monitoring stations where necessary. All certified laboratories shall provide the results of such analysis to the International Data Centre, and in so doing shall fulfil the technical and operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual on Radionuclide Monitoring and the International Exchange of Radionuclide Data.

12. Each State Party undertakes to cooperate in an international exchange of hydroacoustic data to assist in the verification of compliance with this Treaty. This cooperation shall include the establishment and operation of a global network of hydroacoustic monitoring stations. These stations shall provide data in accordance with agreed procedures to the International Data Centre.

13. The network of hydroacoustic stations shall consist of the stations specified in Table 3 of Annex 1 to this Protocol, and shall comprise an overall network of six hydrophone and five T-phase stations. These stations shall fulfil the technical and operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual for Hydroacoustic Monitoring and the International Exchange of Hydroacoustic Data.

14. Each State Party undertakes to cooperate in an international exchange of infrasound data to assist in the verification of compliance with this Treaty. This cooperation shall include the establishment and operation of a global network of infrasound monitoring stations. These stations shall provide data in accordance with agreed procedures to the International Data Centre.

15. The network of infrasound stations shall consist of the stations specified in Table 4 of Annex 1 to this Protocol, and shall comprise an overall network of 60 stations. These stations shall fulfil the technical an operational requirements specified in the Operational Manual for Infrasound Monitoring and the International Exchange of Infrasound Data.

16. The International Data Centre shall receive, collect, process, analyse, report on and archive data from International Monitoring System facilities, including the results of analysis conducted at certified laboratories.

17. The procedures and standard event screening criteria to be used by the International Data Centre in carrying out its agreed functions, in particular for the production of standard reporting products and for the performance of standard range of services for States Parties, shall be elaborated in the Operational Manual for the International Data Centre and shall be progressively developed. The procedures and criteria developed initially by the Preparatory Commission shall be approved by the Conference at its initial session.

18. The International Data Centre shall apply on a routine basis automatic processing methods and interactive human analysis to raw International Monitoring System data in order to produce and archive standard International Data Centre products on behalf of all States Parties. These products shall be provided at no cost to States Parties and shall be without prejudice to final judgements with regard to the nature of any event, which shall remain the responsibility of States Parties, and shall include:

(a) Integrated lists of all signals detected by the International Monitoring System, as well as standard event lists and bulletins, including the values and associated uncertainties calculated for each event located by the International Data Centre, based on a set of standard parameters;

(b) Standard screened event bulletins that result from the application to each event by the International Data Centre of standard event screening criteria, making use of the characterization parameters specified in Annex 2 to this Protocol, with the objective of characterising, highlighting in the standard event bulletin, and thereby screening out, events considered to be consistent with natural phenomena or non-nuclear, man-made phenomena. The standard event bulletin shall indicate numerically for each event the degree to which that event meets or does not meet the event screening criteria. In applying standard event screening, the International Data Centre shall use both global and supplementary screening criteria to take account of regional variations where applicable. The International Data Centre shall progressively enhance its technical capabilities as experience is gained in the operation of the International Monitoring System;

(c) Executive summaries, which summarize the data acquired and archived by the International Data Centre, the products of the International Data Centre, and the performance and operational status of the International Monitoring System and International Data Centre; and

(d) Extracts or subsets of the standard International Data Centre products specified in sub-paragraphs (a) to (c), selected according to the request of an individual State Party.

19. The International Data Centre shall carry out, at no cost to States Parties, special studies to provide in-depth, technical review by expert analysis of data from the International Monitoring System, if requested by the Organization or by a State Party, to improve the estimated values for the standard signal and event parameters.

20. The International Data Centre shall provide States Parties with open, equal, timely and convenient access to all International Monitoring System data, raw or processed, all International Data Centre products, and all other International Monitoring System data in the archive of the International Data Centre or, through the International Data Centre, of International Monitoring System facilities. The methods for supporting data access and the provision of data shall include the following services:

(a) Automatic and regular forwarding to a State Party of the products of the International Data Centre or the selection by the State Party thereof, and, as requested, the selection by the State Party of International Monitoring System data;

(b) The provision of the data or products generated in response to ad hoc requests by States Parties for the retrieval from the International Data Centre and International Monitoring System facility archives of data and products, including interactive electronic access to the International Data Centre data base; and

(c) Assisting individual States Parties, at their request and at no cost for reasonable efforts, with expert technical analysis of International Monitoring System data and other relevant data provided by the requesting State Party, in order to help the State Party concerned to identify the source of specific events. The output of any such technical analysis shall be considered a product of the requesting State Party, but shall be available to all States Parties.

The International Data Centre services specified in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) shall be made available at no cost to each State Party. The volumes and formats of data shall be set out in the Operational Manual for the International Data Centre.

21. The International Data Centre shall, if requested by a State Party, apply to any of its standard products, on a regular and automatic basis, national event screening criteria established by that State Party, and provide the results of such analysis to that State Party. This service shall be undertaken at no cost to the requesting State Party. The output of such national event screening processes shall be considered a product of the requesting State Party.

22. The International Data Centre shall, where required, provide technical assistance to individual States Parties:

(a) In formulating their requirements for selection and screening of data and products;

(b) By installing at the International Data Centre, at no cost to a requesting State Party for reasonable efforts, computer algorithms or software provided by that State Party to compute new signal and event parameters that are not included in the Operational Manual for the International Data Centre, the output being considered products of the requesting State Party; and

(c) By assisting States Parties to develop the capability to receive, process and analyse International Monitoring System data at a national data centre.

23. The International Data Centre shall continuously monitor and report on the operational status of the International Monitoring System facilities, of communications links, and of its own processing systems. It shall provide immediate notification to those responsible should the operational performance of any component fail to meet agreed levels set out in the relevant operational manual.