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The Earthquake‐Source Inversion Validation (SIV) Project

P. Martin Mai, Danijel Schorlemmer, Morgan Page, Jean‐Paul Ampuero, Kimiyuki Asano, Mathieu Causse, Susana Custodio, Wenyuan Fan, Gaetano Festa, Martin Galis, Frantisek Gallovic, Walter Imperatori, Martin Käser, Dmytro Malytskyy, Ryo Okuwaki, Fred Pollitz, Luca Passone, Hoby N T. Razafindrakoto, Haruko Sekiguchi, Seok Goo Song, Surendra N. Somala, Kiran K S. Thingbaijam, Cedric Twardzik, Martin van Driel, Jagdish C. Vyas, Rongjiang Wang, Yuji Yagi, & Olaf Zielke

Published April 27, 2016, SCEC Contribution #6159

Finite‐fault earthquake source inversions infer the (time‐dependent) displacement on the rupture surface from geophysical data. The resulting earthquake source models document the complexity of the rupture process. However, multiple source models for the same earthquake, obtained by different research teams, often exhibit remarkable dissimilarities. To address the uncertainties in earthquake‐source inversion methods and to understand strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches used, the Source Inversion Validation (SIV) project conducts a set of forward‐modeling exercises and inversion benchmarks. In this article, we describe the SIV strategy, the initial benchmarks, and current SIV results. Furthermore, we apply statistical tools for quantitative waveform comparison and for investigating source‐model (dis)similarities that enable us to rank the solutions, and to identify particularly promising source inversion approaches. All SIV exercises (with related data and descriptions) and statistical comparison tools are available via an online collaboration platform, and we encourage source modelers to use the SIV benchmarks for developing and testing new methods. We envision that the SIV efforts will lead to new developments for tackling the earthquake‐source imaging problem.

Citation
Mai, P., Schorlemmer, D., Page, M., Ampuero, J., Asano, K., Causse, M., Custodio, S., Fan, W., Festa, G., Galis, M., Gallovic, F., Imperatori, W., Käser, M., Malytskyy, D., Okuwaki, R., Pollitz, F., Passone, L., Razafindrakoto, H. T., Sekiguchi, H., Song, S., Somala, S. N., Thingbaijam, K. S., Twardzik, C., van Driel, M., Vyas, J. C., Wang, R., Yagi, Y., & Zielke, O. (2016). The Earthquake‐Source Inversion Validation (SIV) Project. Seismological Research Letters, 87(3), 690-708. doi: 10.1785/0220150231.


Related Projects & Working Groups
Source Inversion Validation, Source Inversion Validation Technical Activity Group