SCEC Award Number 21018 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title Enhancements to the Community Fault Model (CFM) and its IT infrastructure to support SCEC science
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Scott Marshall Appalachian State University John Shaw Harvard University Philip Maechling University of Southern California
Other Participants Andreas Plesch (Harvard, Sr. Research Scientist)
Tran Huynh, Edric Pauk, Mei-Hui Su, (USC/SCEC)
SCEC Priorities 3a, 1a, 1b SCEC Groups CXM, Seismology, Geology
Report Due Date 03/15/2022 Date Report Submitted 03/14/2022
Project Abstract
 This report documents the primary effort to develop and enhance SCEC’s Community Fault Model (CFM), a widely used resource (Plesch et al., 2007; Nicholson et al., 2021; Plesch et al., 2021) with many science and seismic hazards assessment applications. 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.
The SCEC Community Fault Model version 5.3.2 (CFM5.3) is the latest in a series of continued, incremental improvements to our understanding of fault structure in Southern California. The model comprises 442 fault objects (in the preferred model) that are deemed capable of generating damaging earthquakes. Fault objects are organized in a self-consistent manner with a system-level hierarchy that is reflected in fault names. During the past year, our collaboration has produced a new model version (5.3.2) and improved the web-based tools that host, visualize, and deliver the CFM to a wide audience. As the most established SCEC CXM effort, many of these web-based resources are being directly used to support other community models. In parallel, we initiated an online peer-evaluation of the current CFM5.3.2 which will be completed in early May.
Intellectual Merit The SCEC Community Fault Model version 5.3.2 (CFM5.3) is the latest in a series of continued, incremental improvements to our understanding of fault structure in Southern California. The model comprises 442 fault objects (in the preferred model) that are deemed capable of generating damaging earthquakes. Fault objects are organized in a self-consistent manner with a system-level hierarchy that is reflected in fault names. During the past year, our collaboration has produced a new model version (5.3.2) and improved the web-based tools that host, visualize, and deliver the CFM to a wide audience. As the most established SCEC CXM effort, many of these web-based resources are being directly used to support other community models. In parallel, we initiated an online peer-evaluation of the current CFM5.3.2. Progress on these topics as well as plans for the future are described in the sections below.
Broader Impacts Our collaboration has produced a new model version (5.3.2) and web-based tools that host, visualize, and deliver the CFM to a wide audience. As the most established SCEC CXM effort, many of these web-based resources are being directly used to support other community models. For example, the same backend software developed in our ongoing work is now being used by the CGM and the geologic framework component of the CRM. A tool that we developed to display large numbers of point data (earthquake catalogs) on the CFM map interface has been adopted by the CGM to display InSAR data. The main enhancements planned for the CFM web tools are the addition of a Google Earth kml file uploader to the map interface. This plugin is freely-available on git hub and should be easily adaptable to our interface. This will allow users to upload their own kml files to the CFM map interface to compare their own data with the CFM model. We expect this will will be of use to other CXM web tools. All of the web-based tools serve to greatly increase accessibility and will facilitate the next generation of SCEC science.
Exemplary Figure Figure 2: Map and perspective views of earthquake catalogs displayed in the CFM web-based tools. These faults and earthquakes are in the 2019 Ridgecrest epicentral zone. Earthquakes are from Hauksson et al., (2020) catalog and are color-coded by depth in the 2D map viewer. The red circles show the two 2019 mainshocks of M6.4 and M7.1, with the magnitude and year information popping up on mouseover.