The VDO (virtual display of objects) group’s main goal this summer was to design and produce VDOs using SCEC-VDO. The VDO animations that were created visually portray different aspects of the UCERF report in order to educate different audiences about what the earthquake rupture forecast is and what the probability of an earthquake will be.

To do this, each important component of the report was divided amongst the group members into sections. The first few animations introduce the UCERF report, emphasizing uniformity, as opposed to previous models that only included certain areas of California. Each group member played an important role in the development of each animation. Emerzon Cruz did an outstanding job on his animation; KTLA showed a clip of him working on it during their nightly news on July 30, 2008, in response to the Chino Hills earthquake. The remaining animations show specific components of the UCERF report. Jennifer Dischler created a fault model animation that demonstrates the two differing ideas about the spatial geometry of the larger, more active faults. Ade Milner designed an animation showing different slip rates of the southern San Jacinto and southern San Andreas faults, employing the use of the new labeling capability to accurately identify these rates. Victor Aguilar created an animation that relates an earthquake to the type of fault (A, B, or C Zone) it occurred on. My Le designed one of the most important animations, which forecasts the probabilities of earthquakes in California and its “realm region”.

With all of the valuable resources here at SCEC, each group member learned a lot this summer! Topping it all off with experiencing a real earthquake, a first for many of the interns! This will definitely be remembered as “the summer the big one almost hit L.A.”!