2011 SCEC-VDO Production Group

Southern California Earthquake Center Virtual Display of Objects (SCEC-VDO) is three-dimensional earthquake visualization software used by the scientific community to illustrate the importance of earthquake information to the general public. SCEC-VDO was created by a team of SCEC interns as part of the Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (USEIT) program. The 2011 USEIT intern class has worked to improve the existing capabilities of SCEC-VDO and add new features by incorporating ESRI’s ArcGIS (Geographic Information System) and space-time plots within SCEC-VDO. ArcGIS can contribute hazard information by exporting such features as hospitals, nuclear power plants, and population densities in a format recognizable in SCEC VDO. The collaboration of SCEC-VDO and GIS allows SCEC-VDO the capability needed to illustrate earthquake hazard in its 3D environment. Another key component of the improved SCEC-VDO is the implementation of space-time plots to better express the complex evolution of earthquake sequences. This space-time view ignores depth and focuses on the magnitude and directional components of earthquake sequences as they evolve through space and time. These key elements and the various additional capabilities implemented by the 2011 USEIT interns work to make SCEC-VDO a truly unique method of interpreting and visualizing earthquake sequences and expand the capabilities of understanding seismic hazard on a global scale.