Conveners: Martin Mai, Danijel Schorlemmer, and Morgan Page
Date: September 7, 2008
Location: Plaza Ballroom CD, Hilton Palm Springs Resort

Earthquake source inversions image the spatio-temporal rupture evolution, and hence constitute a critical research tool to develop a better understanding of the details of the earthquake source process. However, finite-source rupture models, developed by different research teams for the same earthquake, exhibit surprisingly large intra-event variability. Moreover, a recent, small-scale “source inversion blind test” revealed the difficulties that several inversion methods had, even for a rather simple test case. Despite a number of new developments in source-inversion approaches, the reliability, resolution, and robustness of these inversion strategies has not been rigorously examined and tested.

This workshop serves as a starting point for launching an Earthquake Source Inversion Validation Exercise. We invite researchers working in earthquake source inversion (and inversion theory and application in general), users of source-rupture models (e.g., rupture-dynamic and ground-motion-simulation people), and statistical analysts (testing-center folks and related programmers). The scope of the workshop is (a) to briefly summarize current source-inversion methods; (b) to define the long-term strategy for conducting such a validation exercise; (c) to discuss the logistical and computational framework needed for this exercise; (d) to setup task groups for the different steps of the validation (model building; ground-motion synthesis; statistical analysis of submitted models; computational infrastructure).

Agenda