The supercomputer creates more than 700,000 years of earthquake simulations

The researchers used supercomputers to create thousands of years of simulating earthquakes in Southern California, then studied the risks these earthquakes might create.

Written by Lauren Melideo, Ph.D., science writer (lwritesscience)

Quote: Milideo, L., 2021, Supercomputer creates over 700,000 years of simulated earthquakes, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.158

Researchers cannot predict exactly when an earthquake will strike, but new research harnessing the power of supercomputers is explaining the specific characteristics of the area’s faults, helping seismologists better understand the hazards that might exist in Southern California.

Rare events are hard to predict

Big earthquakes are rare, and we haven’t seen such earthquakes in most California faults, says Kevin Milner, a computer scientist at the Southern California Seismic Center and lead author on the new study. The fact that most faults in California have not hosted a major damaging earthquake since recent records are kept, Milner says, lets researchers “infer what types of earthquakes we think are possible with these faults.” This uncertainty creates challenges for risk assessment and planning.

California bugs were mapped on a grand scale.

Milner says the traditional risk assessment is empirically based. This means that what scientists know about earthquakes comes from what can be observed and extrapolated from data from past events. But Milner says the models rely on data from seismically active regions around the world. They are not site specific and thus may overestimate or underestimate the risks of the area due to the variables of their faults and geology. The researchers note that some previous studies used combinations of models based on experiment and physics – those that rely instead on an understanding of physical processes – and take into account area-specific information and general data. Milner and colleagues say a new approach is taking: They only used physics-based methods throughout their model.

Supercomputers

These calculations required immense computing power, and the team turned to two of the largest supercomputers in the world for their completion. Milner says the first step – creating 714,516 years of seismic simulations – took about four days to run on more than 3,500 processors inside Frontera at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Milner says the second step – simulating the ground motions produced by all of those earthquakes – was conducted on the summit, located at the DOE’s Oakridge National Laboratory, and took a similar time.

Frontera, one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Credit: Texas Advance Computing Center

The researchers did not come to specific conclusions regarding changes to risk plans, Milner says, citing the need for more research. The study shows that with a physics-based approach, researchers can not only create simulations of earthquakes, but they can also use these earthquakes to model associated ground motions that inform risk mapping. Their results are consistent with methods, indicating that the new model is yielding valid results, Milner says.

“The fact that we can actually talk to Earth’s movements now is a whole new ground on which to play, and it’s very exciting,” says study co-author Bruce Shaw, a Columbia University seismologist.

The novelty of the study partly lies in the combination of “two methods that have not been combined before,” says Alice Gabriel, professor of seismology and geophysics at the University of Munich, who was not involved in the research.

Marta Pinkowska, a postdoc from the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH in Zurich, who was not involved in the research, says the team is “doing something really far beyond them, but we can go for it, as the computational seismology community.”

An important step

The research team acknowledges that more work is needed before this research begins to inform or change the risk assessment. “This was an important step, proof of concept showing that this kind of model could work [and that it] It can produce ground motions that dovetail with our best models, ”Milner says,“ Now it’s time to look into it, examine it, and build more of our suspicions. ”Milner says these uncertainties include the geometry of errors, which are not well defined far from the surface.

Comparing Earth’s motion results from physics-based and models allows scientists to see where risk estimates might need to change, to accommodate more or less potential hazards at different locations, Shaw says. “It is a tool to start exploring these questions in a way that can help us be more efficient in how we use our limited precious resources,” he says.

The research demonstrates “that such large-scale modeling can contribute to seismic risk assessment,” says Pienkowska.

Shaw says the research could be useful in other places such as New Zealand, where the shallow subduction zone influences surrounding imperfections – a position that is not reflected in the current set of experiment-based ground motion models and thus may not have been accurately predicted by them. Well-studied earthquake-prone regions such as Italy and Iceland may also benefit from this type of physics-based seismic modeling, Gabriel says, as well as developing countries and other locations that lack data and existing models may not apply very well.

“It’s really cool to see geologists … use these big machines to boost earthquake preparedness,” says Gabriel.

References

Milner, KR, Shaw, BE, Goulet, CA, Richards-Dinger, KB, Callaghan, S., Jordan, TH,… & Field, EH (2020). Towards Physics – Non-Regulatory PSHA: A Well Defined Prototype for the Southern California Seismic Hazard Model. Bulletin of the American Seismological Society. https://doi.org/10.1785/0120200216

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