SCEC Award Number 19102 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title Providing infrastructure for the Community Fault Model (CFM) to support SCEC science, community model development, and hazard assessment
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
John Shaw Harvard University Scott Marshall Appalachian State University
Other Participants Philip Maechling
Andreas Plesch
Mei-Hui Su
SCEC Priorities 3a, 3b, 1a SCEC Groups CXM, Geology, Geodesy
Report Due Date 04/30/2020 Date Report Submitted 04/11/2020
Project Abstract
 The Community Fault Model (CFM) is one of SCEC’s most established and widely used community models, with applications in many aspects of SCEC science, including crustal deformation modeling, wave propagation simulations, and probabilistic seismic hazards assessment (e.g., UCERF3). The CFM also directly contributes to other community modeling efforts, such as the Geological Framework (GFM), Community Rheologic (CRM), and Community Velocity (CVM-H) Models.
In collaboration with SCEC web developers, Meu-Hui Su, Edric Pauk, and Tran Huynh, we successfully developed and implemented a web-based viewer and search tool for the CFM (available at https://www.scec.org/research/cfm-viewer/). To facilitate increased modeling of the CFM within the greater SCEC community, the web-viewer also serves a new and improved set of preferred fault representations that utilize a nearly regularized mesh with 500, 1000, and 2000 meter element sizes. Based on user feedback, we have added content to the CFM homepage. This includes scripts for visualizing CFM faults, fault trace maps, a documentation that explains the GOCAD file format, and fault trace data. We have also developed a reproducible methodology for generating fault surfaces from data. We used this new methodology to update the CFM with new and improved fault representations including the source faults for the 2019 M7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence and integrated the CFM with the GFM in a consistent manner. We anticipate that these new tools and model components will facilitate the next peer evaluation of the latest CFM version in future years and support UCERF and similar hazard assessment efforts.
Intellectual Merit This project contributes on an intellectual basis to SCEC in a variety of ways. The CFM, along with other SCEC Community Models, is used widely in many aspects of SCEC science, including crustal deformation modeling, wave propagation simulations, and probabilistic seismic hazards assessment (e.g., UCERF3). The CFM also directly contributes to other community modeling efforts, such as the Geological Framework Model (GFM), Community Rheologic (CRM), and Community Velocity (CVM-H) Models. This project is focused on delivering the model to practitioners, by developing and implementing a new web interface and associated database with the CFM object files and associated metadata. In addition, we developed a completely new methodology for developing tsurf representations that is reproducible and objective, thus supporting a wider range of CFM users.
Broader Impacts The project contributes supports one of SCEC’s flagship Community Models (the CFM), and thus serves as a resource for the Center’s primary mission of earthquake science and hazard assessment. By making the CFM more accessible to scientists, educators, and those professionally engaged in seismic hazard assessment and mitigation on an open website, these efforts help broaden the impact of SCEC and will lead to increased use of the CFM.
Exemplary Figure Figure 1: web-based CFM query and download tool.

Figure 2: Map view of the final model of the 2019 Ridgecrest faults, including the Eastern and Southern Little Lake fault zones (colored surfaces). Focal Mechanisms and hypocenters are from Hauksson et al. (2012, 2020).