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2007), led by Ned Field, released the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF),
providing the state with its first comprehensive time-dependent forecast model. The 28-month
UCERF study was the product of a very successful partnership among SCEC, the USGS, and the
California Geological Survey (CGS), sponsored in part by the California Earthquake Authority
(CEA). In its final report, WGCEP (2007) has identified a number of directions for research that
could substantially improve time-dependent earthquake forecasting, and their recommendations
will be fodder for interesting planning discussions throughout the Annual Meeting.
Another set of studies, conducted by SCEC’s PetaSHA collaboration in high-performance
computing, delivered simulations of a large scenario earthquake on the southern San Andreas
fault. One of these simulations, by Rob Graves and his colleagues, was selected to be the basis for
the Great Southern California ShakeOut (Figure 2b). The ShakeOut exercises, scheduled for mid-
November, 2008, are being organized by Lucy Jones of the USGS as part of the Multi-Hazard
Demonstration Project and will include the largest earthquake drill in U.S. history. The plans for
ShakeOut will be a major topic at this Annual Meeting.
Figure 2. (a) The WGCEP (2007) final report and fact sheet, presenting the Uniform
California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF). (b) USGS Circular 1324, describing the
ShakeOut Scenario. The cover shows a snapshot of the M7.8 ShakeOut scenario
earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault, simulated by Rob Graves and visualized
by Geoff Ely.
Many other projects, large and small, logged significant progress during the past year, and you will
be able to view these achievements in the hundreds of posters on display at the meeting. To take
one example, the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) became
operational in September, 2007, and updated versions of its testing-center software have been
released quarterly ever since. As Danijel Schorlemmer will be describe, CSEP is now running
earthquake prediction experiments in California, New Zealand, Italy, and, most recently, Japan.
2008 SCEC Annual Meeting | 17