HR: 1330h
AN: ED32C-1214    [PDF]
TI: Data and Visualizations in the Southern California Earthquake Center's Fault Information System
AU: * Perry, S
EM: perry@usc.edu
AF: Southern California Earthquake Center, University of Southern California 3651 Trousdale Parkway SCI 169, Los Angeles, CA 90089 United States
AB: The Southern California Earthquake Center's Fault Information System (FIS) provides a single point of access to fault-related data and models from multiple databases and datasets. The FIS is built of computer code, metadata and Web interfaces based on Web services technology, which enables queries and data interchange irrespective of computer software or platform. Currently we have working prototypes of programmatic and browser-based access. The first generation FIS may be searched and downloaded live, by automated processes, as well as interactively, by humans using a browser. Users get ascii data in plain text or encoded in XML. Via the Earthquake Information Technology (EIT) Interns (Juve and others, this meeting), we are also testing the effectiveness of querying multiple databases using a fault database ontology. For more than a decade, the California Geological Survey (CGS), SCEC, and the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) have put considerable, shared resources into compiling and assessing published fault data, then providing the data on the Web. Several databases now exist, with different formats, datasets, purposes, and users, in various stages of completion. When fault databases were first envisioned, the full power of today's internet was not yet recognized, and the databases became the Web equivalents of review papers, where one could read an overview summation of a fault, then copy and paste pertinent data. Today, numerous researchers also require rapid queries and downloads of data. Consequently, the first components of the FIS are MySQL databases that deliver numeric values from earlier, text-based databases. Another essential service provided by the FIS is visualizations of fault representations such as those in SCEC's Community Fault Model. The long term goal is to provide a standardized, open-source, platform-independent visualization technique. Currently, the FIS makes available fault model viewing software for users with access to Matlab or Java3D. The latter is the interactive LA3D software of the SCEC EIT intern team, which will be demonstrated at this session.
UR: http://www.scec.org/FIS
DE: 7200 SEISMOLOGY
DE: 7215 Earthquake parameters
DE: 7221 Paleoseismology
DE: 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting