Topic: The QuakeSim project

[Nemesis]

Link to the QuakeSim project website

Claims have been made that the project has predicted 15 of the last 16 California earthquakes. 

Welcome to the QuakeSim project website

Our objectives

    * Develop a solid Earth science framework in order to better understand active tectonic and earthquake processes
    * Construct a fully interoperable system of tools for studying these processes.

 QuakeSim is sponsored by the NASA Earth Science Enterprise, in partnership with Goddard Space Flight Center, with the full participation of the related science and technology communities.

We are developing three major simulation tools (available for download), GeoFEST, PARK, and Virtual California: 

    * GeoFEST uses stress-displacement finite elements to model stress and flow in a realistic model of the Earth's crust and upper mantle in a complex region such as the Los Angeles Basin. The model includes stress and strain due to the elastic response to an earthquake event in the region of the slipping fault, the time-dependent viscoelastic relaxation, and the net effects from a series of earthquakes. The physical domain may be two or three dimensional and may contain heterogeneous materials and an arbitrary network of faults.

    * PARK is a boundary element program that determines the stress on every element of the fault surface due to slip on every other element, using a Green's function approach. For example, it can be used to compute the history of slip, slip velocity, and stress on a vertical strike-slip fault that results from using state-of-the-art rate and state frictional constitutive laws on the fault for a specific geographic setting at Parkfield, California.

    * Virtual California is a code that utilizes the Monte Carlo method in order to generate simulated, realistic earthquakes on an arbitrary fault surface mesh. It uses topologically realistic networks of independent fault segments that are mediated by elastic interactions. These segments can be designed to represent fault systems spanning the region of California.

 See these links for more details about:

    * the science objectives and rationale (pdf)
    * the software engineering and development plan (pdf)