SCEC Award Number 10186 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title Quantitative restoration of fault slip from lidar point clouds
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Michael Oskin University of California, Davis Oliver Kreylos University of California, Davis
Other Participants Bernd Hamann
SCEC Priorities A2, A7, A9 SCEC Groups Geology, FARM, EFP
Report Due Date 02/28/2011 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
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Intellectual Merit High-resolution lidar data sets present an immense, largely untapped archive of information useful for understanding fault system behavior. In arid settings, such as southern California, the most recent slip events are often well preserved in the landscape, even after several hundred to thousands of years of modification by surface processes. Thus it is possible to vastly expand knowledge of the extent and magnitude of past earthquake ruptures through systematic measurement of small-scale offsets illuminated by this new topography. This data in turn is valuable for understanding rupture scaling relationships used in hazard models, relating rupture patterns to longer-term fault slip, and testing how ruptures respond to fault-zone complexity and fault interaction. We are developing a tool to explore and quantify fault offsets by taking advantage of the full compliment of information present in 3-D lidar point cloud data (both airborne and terrestrial).
Broader Impacts This project integrates geoscience and computer science through the successful KeckCAVES collaboration at UC Davis. Point-based computing approaches, embodied in software such as LidarViewer, could revolutionize how earth scientists examine and measure topographic data.
Exemplary Figure N/A
Linked Publications

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