2011 UseIT Data Group

Every summer, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) challenges interns to modify and improve SCEC’s earthquake visualization software, Visual Display of Objects (SCEC-VDO) for the Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (UseIT) program. The Data Team compiled information about six global earthquake sequences: the Maule quake sequence in Chile, the Port-au-Prince sequence in Haiti, the Tohoku sequence in Japan, the El Mayor-Cucapah sequence in Mexico, the Darfield sequence in New Zealand, and the earthquake sequence surrounding Sumatra, Indonesia.  The earthquake catalogs that were used included the ANSS (Advanced National Seismic System) and the Global CMT (Global Centroid Moment Tensor).  Each earthquake sequence included the mainshock, aftershocks, and foreshocks. The data included locations, centroid moment tensors, focal mechanisms, and magnitudes of the earthquakes.

Information on population density, transportation routes, and infrastructure was found for each of the six countries and California.  This information was then displayed through GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software.  The GIS maps displayed data on hospitals, major airports, major roads, railways, and nuclear power plants. In addition, California data included locations of schools, fire stations, and police stations.  This information can be used to assess the hazards and impact an earthquake could have on society.  Research was also conducted on the CyberShake project conducted by SCEC and the ShakeMaps that SCEC created. All of the resulting information was then posted in the data team’s own website, http://useitdata.info.Dataon the website are categorized by the corresponding countries.