Imagine if the nightly news featured an earthquake forecast alongside your local weather outlook.
The CyberShake project, based at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), is advancing geophysics toward that goal. Five years into a giant, multi-institutional effort led by SCEC Director Thomas Jordan, CyberShake 3.0 is producing maps that predict how much ground motion can be expected throughout the Los Angeles, Calif. basin over the next 50 years.
To create their latest maps for CyberShake, SCEC teamed with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), whose massive supercomputer, Ranger, enabled the creation of next-generation hazard predictions that are more comprehensive than anything that has been created before.
The CyberShake predictions, called seismic hazard maps, have the potential to preserve thousands of lives and save billions of dollars in the case of a catastrophic earthquake. Emergency response managers count on these predictions to determine what areas will be hardest hit in a quake, and where to deploy resources. Building engineers rely on them as well to construct structurally sound buildings.
Continue reading the full article about TACC’s involvement with SCEC.
