TeraShake 1 & 2 Earthquake Simulations

TeraShake 1 & 2

Viz Credits: Amit Chourasia, Steve Cutchin
Data Credits: Kim Olsen el. al. SCEC
Tools: Maya, Vista Volume Renderer
TeraShake 1 & 2 models earth shaking that could rattle Simulations Southern California if a 230 kilometer section of the San Andreas fault ruptured producing a magnitude 7.7 earthquake. The simulation consists of 7 different simulations, 4 in phase one and 3 in phase two yielding a total of 160 TB of data. We have done visualization of portions of this data with a variety of methods for scientific investigation and dissemination. There are over 130,000 images and more than 50 unique movies created in this project.

Publication - Chourasia, A., Cutchin, S. M., Olsen, K.B., Minster, B., Day, S., Cui, Y., Maechling, P., Moore, R., Jordan, T. (2007)
Visual insights into high-resolution earthquake simulations, IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications (Discovering the Unexpected) Sept-Oct 2007
Publication - Cui, Y., Moore, R., Olsen, K., Chourasia, A., Maechling, P., Minster. B., Day, S., Hu, Y., Zhu, J., Majumdar, A., Jordan, T. (2007) Enabling very-large scale earthquake simulations on parallel machines "Advancing Science and Society through Computation", International Conference on Computational Science 2007, Part I, Lecture Notes in Computer Science series 4487, pp. 46-53, Springer
Publication - Olsen, K. B., S. M. Day, J. B. Minster, Y. Cui, A. Chourasia, M. Faerman, R. Moore, P. Maechling, and T. Jordan (2006), Strong shaking in Los Angeles expected from southern San Andreas earthquake, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L07305, doi:10.1029/2005GL025472. The manuscript was published as highlight with cover image on the issue of GRL.
Publication - Olsen K. B. , S. M. Day, J. B. Minster, Y. Cui, A. Chourasia, D. Okaya, P. Maechling, T. Jordan (2008), TeraShake2: Simulation of Mw7.7 earthquakes on the southern San Andreas fault with spontaneous rupture description, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. (Accepted)
Book Chapter -Cui Y., A. Chourasia, R. Moore, K. B. Olsen, P. Maechling and T. Jordan, The TeraShake Computational Platform for Large-Scale Earthquake Simulations, Springer e-book series. (accepted)

Highlights
• TeraShake wins best visualization award at TeraGrid 08
• An animation was featured at the IEEE Vis 2006 Scientific Animation Theatre in Baltimore
• An animation was featured on National Geographic's documentary on earthquakes in Sept 2006.

2004-2006

Project Website

TeraShake 2.3
This images shows how the computation was divided among 240 processors in relation to the region. Each yellowish and greenish box represents a processor computing the volume bounded by it.
May 2006
Movie (4 mb)

Project Webpage

 TeraShake 2.2   Feb 2006
Movie (3 mb)

Project Webpage

TeraShake 2.1   Nov 2005

Movie (65 mb)
Movie (27 mb)
Movie (3 mb)

Project Webpage

TeraShake 1.4   Jun 2005
Movie (22 mb)

Project Webpage

TeraShake 1.3   Feb 2005
Movie (30 mb)
Movie (11 mb)

Project Webpage

TeraShake 1.2   Nov 2004
Movie (30 mb)

Project Webpage

TeraShake 1.1   Sep 2004
Movie (235 mb)
Project Webpage