Annual Meeting - SCEC.org

Poster Abstracts | Group 1 – CEO
Southern California were given the challenge of presenting the UCERF2 report in an interactive
medium using the SCEC-Virtual Display of Objects program. SCEC-VDO is a program developed
by participants in the USEIT program for the express purpose of displaying visual information
relevant to understanding seismic processes.
The USEIT developers team augmented SCEC-VDO with the ability to display the participation
probabilities assigned to various regions around California determined by the UCERF report.
These probabilities can be computed within a minute so users can query SCEC-VDO in order to
determine the probability that a particular region will participate in a fault rupture above a certain
magnitude over a specified period of time. Additionally, many of the fault models and earthquake
data used to produce the UCERF2 report are now available within SCEC-VDO and can be
displayed simultaneously for analysis. Finally, the code base has been restructured in order to
allow for modular development which is more amenable to being used in an open source project.
1-003
ANIMATING, DEPICTING AND EXPLAINING THE FAULTS, EARTHQUAKES,
PARTICIPATION PROBABILITIES, AND KEY POINTS OF THE UCERF REPORT
THROUGH SCEC-VDO Milner K, Aguilar V, Dischler J, Cruz-Guandique EA, Le M, and Ihrig
M
The Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (USEIT) program is a teambased
summer internship. Each year the interns are given a “Grand Challenge”. The 2008 goal of
the Virtual Display of Objects (VDO) group was to animate and explain the Uniform California
Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF) objects using the Southern California Earthquake Center
(SCEC)-VDO software. This software “is an interactive, 4D visualization program created using
Java3D and used to visualize earthquakes, faults, maps, and other models and data sets of interest
to earth scientists.” The group virtually displayed examples of deformation fault models,
explanations about the participation probabilities, earthquake catalogs and many other key
products of the UCERF Report. The VDO animations explain the alternative deformation models,
which show the trade-off of the slip rate between the San Jacinto and San Andreas faults. Another
animation depicts the difference between the earthquake rate models, Type-A and Type-B faults,
and Type-C zones. The VDO animations also explain in detail the location of the faults in Southern
California, display past earthquakes, and clarify the many key products of the UCERF Report to
enlighten end-users and the society at large. Extensive research was required to transfer the report
into visual animations. The VDO group encountered challenges with the software, most of the
tasks required development of plug-in capabilities that were not yet available. The Developer
group’s goal was to develop new capabilities for displaying UCERF information; both groups
collaborated and assigned; both groups collaborated and assigned liaisons to address issues on
both ends.
1-004
PIONEERING A DIGITAL ARCHIVE FOR THE IMPORTATION, PRESERVATION,
AND ACCESSIBILITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKE CENTER
RECORDS Boutwell C, Cruz-Guandique EA, Gonzalez J, Looney GK, Miller BR, and Pratts M
As computer-based technology is readily becoming more available and digital material is
continuously being created, the need for a digital library emerges. The purpose of the Digital
Library created for the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) during the summer of 2008
is to communicate the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF), Version 2 report,
as well as to digitally preserve its contents and related materials. SCEC’s digital library is
supported by the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries system, from which assets and
70 | Southern California Earthquake Center