SCEC Award Number 20081 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)
Mei-Hui Su (USC/SCEC web developer)
Edric Pauk (USC/SCEC web developer)
SCEC Priorities 3a, 1a, 1b SCEC Groups CXM, Seismology, Geology
Report Due Date 03/15/2021 Date Report Submitted 03/08/2021
Project Abstract
 The CFM (Plesch et al., 2007) is one of SCEC’s most established and widely used community resources, with applications in many aspects of SCEC science, including crustal deformation modeling, wave propagation simulations, and probabilistic seismic hazards assessment (e.g., UCERF3). 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.

Our group has worked closely with SCEC staff (Tran Huyn and Edric Pauk) to make our results available to the research community through enhancements in the SCEC CXM website (https://www.scec.org/research/CXM).

Results of this past year’s efforts include:
1) Developing and releasing a new model version, CFM5.3, and its associated products, including faults traces (now also provided in .kml) and surface meshes at a range of resolutions. CFM5.3 includes more than 60 newly represented faults, and refinements to many other fault representations.
2) Major enhancements to the CFM metadata, including addition of area-weighted average fault strike and dip, surface area, and the population of data fields that define primary fault slip sense and references used to define the fault geometry.
3) Enhancements to the CFM web-viewer, including the ability to search by region and fault orientation, and the addition of a new advanced capability to render and view fault representations in 3D.
Intellectual Merit This project contributes on an intellectual basis to SCEC in a variety of ways. The CFM, along with other SCEC Community Models, is used widely in many aspects of SCEC science, including crustal deformation modeling, wave propagation simulations, and probabilistic seismic hazards assessment (e.g., UCERF3). The CFM also directly contributes to other community modeling efforts, such as the Geological Framework Model (GFM), Community Rheologic (CRM), and Community Velocity (CVM-H) Models. This project is focused on delivering the model to practitioners, by developing and implementing a new web interface including a 3D viewer and associated database with the CFM object files and associated metadata. In addition, we developed a completely new methodology for developing tsurf representations that is reproducible and objective, thus supporting a wider range of CFM users.
Broader Impacts This project contributes supports one of SCEC’s flagship Community Models (the CFM), and thus serves as a resource for the Center’s primary mission of earthquake science and hazard assessment. By making the CFM more accessible to scientists, educators, and those professionally engaged in seismic hazard assessment and mitigation on an open website, these efforts help broaden the impact of SCEC and will lead to increased use of the CFM.
Exemplary Figure Figure 3. Screenshot of the new interactive 3D CFM viewer. In this web-based tool, the true 3D geometry can be visualized showing that the Puente Hills faults are shallower than the Lower Elysian Park fault.
Linked Publications

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