HR: 15:00h
AN: NG12B-05 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Computing and Visualizing the Complex Dynamics of Earthquake Fault Systems: Towards Ensemble Earthquake Forecasting
AU: * Rundle, J
EM: jbrundle@ucdavis.edu
AF: Ctr. for Comp. Sci. & Eng., University of California One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616 United States
AU: Rundle, P
EM: paul_rundle@hmc.edu
AF: Dept. of Physics, Harvey Mudd College 301 E 12th St., Claremont, CA 91711 United States
AU: Donnellan, A
EM: andrea.donnellan@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Earth and Space Science Division, Jet Propulsion Lab. 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Li, P
EM: peggy@spartan.jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Earth and Space Science Division, Jet Propulsion Lab. 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AB: We consider the problem of the complex dynamics of earthquake fault systems, and whether numerical simulations can be used to define an ensemble forecasting technology similar to that used in weather and climate research. To effectively carry out such a program, we need 1) a topological realistic model to simulate the fault system; 2) data sets to constrain the model parameters through a systematic program of data assimilation; 3) a computational technology making use of modern paradigms of high performance and parallel computing systems; and 4) software to visualize and analyze the results. In particular, we focus attention of a new version of our code Virtual California (version 2001) in which we model all of the major strike slip faults extending throughout California, from the Mexico-California border to the Mendocino Triple Junction. We use the historic data set of earthquakes larger than magnitude M $> 6$ to define the frictional properties of all 654 fault segments (degrees of freedom) in the model. Previous versions of Virtual California had used only 215 fault segments to model the strike slip faults in southern California. To compute the dynamics and the associated surface deformation, we use message passing as implemented in the MPICH standard distribution on a small Beowulf cluster consisting of 10 cpus. We are also planning to run the code on significantly larger machines so that we can begin to examine much finer spatial scales of resolution, and to assess scaling properties of the code. We present results of simulations both as static images and as mpeg movies, so that the dynamical aspects of the computation can be assessed by the viewer. We also compute a variety of statistics from the simulations, including magnitude-frequency relations, and compare these with data from real fault systems.
UR: http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~rundle/
DE: 3210 Modeling
DE: 3220 Nonlinear dynamics
DE: 3230 Numerical solutions
DE: 3240 Chaos
DE: 7209 Earthquake dynamics and mechanics
SC: Nonlinear Geophysics [NG]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting