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Shakemovie: Rapid Post-earthquake Animation of Near-fault Ground Shaking

Description: 

Earthquakes are known to generate complex near-fault ground shaking effects such as rupture directivity and amplification of waves in sedimentary basins. Verbally describing these features can be cumbersome and time consuming especially within an event-specific context. An alternate way to efficiently convey this information is with visualizations. ShakeMovie (patterned after Princeton’s Global-ShakeMovie) is a recently developed resource that quickly produces a computer-generated animation of earthquake rupture and ground shaking effects throughout the near-fault region.

The ShakeMovie workflow consists of five main modules: 1) 3D velocity mesh creation, 2) kinematic rupture specification, 3) 3D wave-propagation, 4) graphics rendering, and 5) video generation. Required inputs are a general description of the earthquake and its location, i.e., magnitude, hypocenter, slip mechanism and faulting information. Then, the Graves-Pitarka kinematic rupture generator is used to create the full source parameterization needed for the computation. The current implementation covers most of California using the SCEC 3D Community Velocity Model, the USGS SF Bay Region 3D Velocity Model and the Cape Mendocino Region 3D Velocity Model. The wave-simulation code uses a grid spacing of 100 meters and minimum shear wave velocity of 500 m/s, yielding results at shaking periods of one second and longer. Graphics rendering and video generation are done using Generic Mapping Tools and FFmpeg software packages, respectively. To produce the animation in a timely manner, parallel coding coupled with High Performance Computing (HPC) resources are utilized. The goal is to have the animation available within one hour following the occurrence of the earthquake. The ShakeMovie workflow has been successfully implemented on several HPC platforms and currently is being run on Frontera at the Texas Advanced Computing Center under an allocation to SCEC. In my presentation, in addition to describing the workflow elements, I will also show examples of recent ShakeMovies and discuss strategies on possible future improvements.

Session: Visualization and Sonification in Solid Earth Geosciences, What’s Next? - I

Type: Oral

Date: 4/17/2025

Presentation Time: 10:30 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Robert

Student Presenter: No

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