Visualization of Hazards Associated with Simulated Earthquakes in Southern California

Ashlee Trotter, Ramon Mei, Paige R. Given, Christina Polcino, Elvis Carrillo, Jordan Wolz, Resherle Verna, Jozi K. Pearson, Gabriela R. Noriega, & Thomas H. Jordan

Published August 1, 2018, SCEC Contribution #8247, 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #315

The 2018 Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (USEIT) internship program challenged the Hazard and Risk Visualization (HaRVi) Team to analyze and visualize threatening earthquake scenarios on the southern section of the San Andreas Fault system based on economic loss and location. The scenarios were selected from a 1-million year catalog of earthquake simulations generated by the USEIT High Performance Computing Team using the Rate-State earthQuake Simulator. We utilized the Open Seismic Hazard Analysis (OpenSHA) software and Javascript to manipulate seismic data into ShakeMap files that display ground motion along a fault rupture. These ShakeMaps were then converted to XML files and uploaded into FEMA’s Hazus (hazard analysis software application) to calculate the impact of ground motion within different affected areas. Based on magnitude and location, scenarios were selected to calculate economic losses and to estimate average annualized losses to serve as an indicator of high-risk events. The data was narrowed and categorized by constructing various different earthquake “classes” based on the faults ruptured, percentage of fault rupture, and event magnitude. This allowed us to conduct thrust fault analyses of the Greater Los Angeles Area. Over 100 simulated scenarios were analyzed using this process. The HaRVi team worked closely with the SCEC-VDO (Visual Display of Objects), Probabilistic Forecasting, and the HPC teams in order to achieve their research goals. We utilized visualization tools such as ESRI’s ArcGIS program and SCEC-VDO to illustrate the results based on Hazus’ calculations.

Key Words
earthquake, simulation, RSQSim, Hazus, ArcMap

Citation
Trotter, A., Mei, R., Given, P. R., Polcino, C., Carrillo, E., Wolz, J., Verna, R., Pearson, J. K., Noriega, G. R., & Jordan, T. H. (2018, 08). Visualization of Hazards Associated with Simulated Earthquakes in Southern California. Poster Presentation at 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Communication, Education, and Outreach (CEO)