Intellectual Merit
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Rapid scientific response to strong (M≥6), damaging earthquakes, especially in southern California, is central to the mission of SCEC. Each such event presents valuable opportunities to improve physics-based understanding of earthquake phenomena. Response efforts mobilize the core earth-science disciplines of SCEC--seismology, geodesy, and geology--to gather and preserve ephemeral earthquake data. These efforts must occur as quickly as possible, while aftershocks, transient motions, and surface rupture are strongest and best expressed. Thus earthquake response demands experimental design in real time, with information shared freely and efficiently between disciplines, and guided by hypotheses from the cutting edge of earthquake science.
SCEC serves three roles that guide a more effective rapid scientific response to earthquakes: (1) Intellectual leadership spanning the breadth of earthquake system science. (2) Coordination of the response of the earthquake science community. (3) Communication of knowledge to the world at large. |