European Earthquake Simulator

Abstract

The calculation of earthquake scenarios and the radiating wave fields in complex 3-D Earth models is playing an increasingly important role in (1) determining the structure of the Earth’s interior; (2) providing strong ground motion information for potential earthquakes; and (3) understanding the physics of the earthquake process. In the FP6 project SPICE (www.spice-rtn.org) a number of parallel 3-D wave propagation algorithms was developed, implemented and tested on supercomputer hardware. These codes are now ready to serve as a central engines for scientific and engineering problems for earthquake related issues. The proposed project shall provide the computational resources for the first systematic near-realtime calculation of seismic wavefields propagating from earthquake sources in or around the European continent. It will thereby match the observational efforts in the FP6 project NERIES (neries.knmi.nl) that aims at providing centralized access to several hundred seismic stations across Europe. The ultimate goal of the combined projects is to come up with a new high-resolution tomographic model of the subsurface structure of the European Plate and the adjacent region. Such a model will have a tremendous impact on the understanding of the evolution of the European continents, the evaluation of shaking hazard and earthquake risks, and the accuracy of real-time earthquake parameter estimations in early-warning systems.