Simulations for Earthquake Risk Assessment

Time snapshots (map view looking at the surface of the earth) of a massively parallel simulation of a rupturing earthquake fault and propagation seismic waves

With the major advances occurring in high performance computing, the ability to accurately simulate the complex processes associated with major earthquakes is becoming a reality.

High performance simulations offer a transformational approach to earthquake hazard and risk assessments that can dramatically increase our understanding of earthquake processes and provide improved estimates of the ground motions that can be expected in future earthquakes. This work will bring together a multidisciplinary team of earth scientists and earthquake engineers from the DOE national laboratory complex to develop  advanced computational tools that will take full advantages of emerging, cutting-edge DOE computational platforms