The SCEC Software Ecosystem for Earthquake System Science Research

Philip J. Maechling, Jacobo Bielak, Scott Callaghan, Yifeng Cui, Edward H. Field, Christine A. Goulet, Robert W. Graves, Thomas H. Jordan, Kevin R. Milner, Kim B. Olsen, Daniel Roten, William H. Savran, Fabio Silva, Mei-Hui Su, Ricardo Taborda, & John E. Vidale

Published August 14, 2018, SCEC Contribution #8582, 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #296

The Southern California Earthquake Center Community Modeling Environment (SCEC/CME) collaboration has developed a collection of independent, but inter-related, scientific software systems designed to support earthquake system science research. We describe this collection as a software ecosystem to emphasize that these codes are developed and co-evolve in a shared collaborative scientific and open-science computing environment. The SCEC software ecosystem includes the Unified Community Velocity Model (UCVM) to deliver several California crustal velocity models (CVM-S, CVM-H, UCVM), advanced Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) methods (OpenSHA), broadband ground motion methods (Broadband Platform), deterministic wave propagation codes (AWP-ODC, Hercules), a physics-based PSHA platform (CyberShake), and a forecast testing center (CSEP). SCEC scientific software distributions are provided to the research community as open-source scientific software that can be compiled and run in standard Linux environments on multiple computer architectures. The SCEC scientific applications are usually developed as stand-alone codes that input and output standardized data formats. Selected computationally intensive codes have been parallelized, and in some cases, accelerated on many-core systems, to support large-scale ground motion simulations. Scientific codes in the ecosystem can often be combined into complex workflows to automate multi-stage research calculations, with the interfaces between programs using file-based data exchange formats, or database queries. In some cases, such as with the AWP-ODC and Hercules earthquake wave propagation software, the SCEC software ecosystem supports multiple scientific applications that perform equivalent calculations using alternative methods, helping to verify computational results for complex problems where theoretical and/or analytical solutions are not available. As individual programs, and through the combined capabilities of multiple codes, the SCEC software ecosystem has enabled significant scientific and computing advances and groundbreaking earthquake system science research.

Key Words
Velocity Model, simulation, Broadband, Software

Citation
Maechling, P. J., Bielak, J., Callaghan, S., Cui, Y., Field, E. H., Goulet, C. A., Graves, R. W., Jordan, T. H., Milner, K. R., Olsen, K. B., Roten, D., Savran, W. H., Silva, F., Su, M., Taborda, R., & Vidale, J. E. (2018, 08). The SCEC Software Ecosystem for Earthquake System Science Research. Poster Presentation at 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Community Modeling Environment (CME)