HR: 0800h
AN: SF41A-0747    [Abstracts]
TI: An Ontology for Seismic Sources and its Application in the SCEC Community Modeling Environment
AU: * Zechar, J D
EM: zechar@usc.edu
AF: Southern California Earthquake Center, University of Southern California, 3651 Trousdale Parkway, Suite 169, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0742 United States
AU: * Zechar, J D
EM: zechar@usc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Zumberge Hall of Science (ZHS) 3651 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AU: Jordan, T H
EM: tjordan@usc.edu
AF: Southern California Earthquake Center, University of Southern California, 3651 Trousdale Parkway, Suite 169, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0742 United States
AU: Jordan, T H
EM: tjordan@usc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Zumberge Hall of Science (ZHS) 3651 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AB: Seismologists have devised many ways to represent earthquake sources: double-couples, centroid moment tensors (CMTs), elementary dislocations, and other point sources; finite moment tensors (FMTs) and other higher-moment expansions, fault-slip distributions (FSDs), and volumetric sources. The mathematical and physical diversity of these representations is further expanded by the host of coordinate systems, physical units, topological assumptions, and geometrical conventions in common use. In this presentation, we outline a machine-readable ontology containing conceptual relationships among a hierarchy of source representations. Our purpose is to create a more flexible set of tools for constructing and manipulating source representations, describing sources in numerical simulations of earthquakes, translating from one representation to another, and mapping high-order representations into lower-order objects (e.g., calculating a CMT or FMT from an FSD). We have built the earthquake source ontology using the PowerLoom Knowledge Representation System (http://www.isi.edu/isd/loom/powerloom/) and leveraged standardized ontologies that deal with physical units and coordinate systems. An important issue is the assimilation of mathematical relationships among source representations into the ontology. The process we have used includes developing a set of Java objects which specify canonical source representations and their varieties. We illustrate an application of the ontology to a user interface for ground-motion simulations (Pathway 2) of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Community Modeling Environment.
DE: 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
DE: 7299 General or miscellaneous
DE: 7200 SEISMOLOGY
DE: 7212 Earthquake ground motions and engineering
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting