High-performance computing at SCEC

The SCEC Community Modeling Environment (SCEC/CME) Collaboration performs basic seismic hazard research using high-performance computing technologies on the PetaSHA-1/PetaShake/PetaSHA-2 Projects. These Projects seek to advance seismic hazard research through the use of Petascale computing facilities as they become available to the NSF research community.

The science objectives of the PetaSHA and PetaShake Projects are formulated in terms of four science thrusts: (1) Extend deterministic simulations of strong ground motions to 3 Hz for investigating the upper frequency limit of deterministic ground-motion prediction. (2) Improve the resolution of dynamic rupture simulations by an order of magnitude for investigating the effects of realistic friction laws, geologic heterogeneity, and near-fault stress states on seismic radiation. (3) Compute physics-based PSHA maps and validate those using seismic and paleo-seismic data. (4) Improve the Southern California structural models using full 3D waveform tomography

Build a velocity mesh for the TeraShake region (600km x 300km x 80km) at 100m resolution using CVM-H 5.3.
Run a series of simulations at low frequencies (e.g. 0.5 Hz) in the southern California region looking for TeraShake-like wave guide effects.
Calculate 1000 CyberShake Hazard curves at 0.5 Hz frequency to develop a low-resolution hazard map for Los Angeles using WGCEP-2007 ERF. (PetaSHA Milestone: M4)
Use DynaShake to develop a catalog of dynamic ruptures for use in establishing realistic parameterization of ruptures produced by pseudo-dynamic rupture generators.
Expand the Broadband Platform to use distributed computing resources and improve it's performance by two orders of magnitude.
Perform a full 3D inversion for a 300x600 Km region in Southern California.

An earlier version of the SCEC/CME Web site is available and can be found here