SCEC Award Number 24091 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Research Project (Multiple Investigators / Institutions)
Proposal Title Continuation of Development for the New Statewide California Earthquake Center Fragile Geologic Features Database
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Xiaofeng Meng University of Southern California Yehuda Ben-Zion University of Southern California Philip Maechling University of Southern California Daniel Trugman University of Nevada, Reno
SCEC Milestones C1,2,3-1, C1-1, D3-3 SCEC Groups CEM, GM
Report Due Date 03/15/2025 Date Report Submitted 03/11/2025
Project Abstract
 Fragile geological features (FGFs) can help us determine the upper-bound limits of ground motions that a region experienced, but with substantial uncertainties. Creating a centralized FGF database for the western US could significantly accelerate multidisciplinary progress in FGF-related analysis. The majority of existing features in SCEC-FGF are inherited from the old SCEC PBR archive, which focuses on southern California. As SCEC transitions to the statewide center, it is a great opportunity to include FGFs beyond southern California. Prof. Jim Brune of University of Nevada, Reno collected thousands of pictures of PBRs in western US over several decades, which is likely the only existing dataset of PBRs in western US. Although extremely valuable, there are tremendous challenges to sort through the dataset across several decades. Because the raw data consists of scanned film photos and early digital camera photos, no geolocation and date information exist in the photos’ metadata. We developed a Python code to identify the lat/lon coordinates and date for all photos based on limited metadata and filenames. In total, we were able to identify the location and date for 2189 photos. Next, we manually inspected all photos to identify 1237 PBRs captured in them. Finally, the processed metadata and photos of PBRs will be stored in SQL tables and inserted into the SCEC-FGF database.
Intellectual Merit The determination of the upper limits of earthquake ground motions is a key knowledge gap for the design of critical infrastructure such as nuclear repositories, power plants or even dams. Our work of documentations of damaged Fragile Geological Features (FGFs) beyond southern California is critical in calibrating and validating FGF ground motion assessment methodologies developed from lab experiments and numerical modeling. The work is in direct alignment with SCEC’s mission on “gathering information from seismic and geodetic sensors, geologic field observations, and laboratory experiments”.
Broader Impacts Our work could help determine the upper-bound limits of ground motions produced by earthquakes in the state of California and Nevada, and validate numerical ground motion modeling. The database will be used by the SCEC community as the reference when looking for damaged FGFs following future earthquakes.
SCEC SOURCES interns Sagar Kapri and Destini Paton are main contributors in this project and performed several critical tasks for the inventory of the PBRs and the database development. We devised tasks to help them develop a skill set in various areas including computer programming, planning and management of research tasks, and communications.
Project Participants Xiaofeng Meng, Phil Macheling, Yehuda Ben-Zion from SCEC and Daniel Trugman from University of Nevada, Reno led the project. Sagar Kapri from UC Berkeley and Destini Paton from UNLV has contributed tremendously on this project as SCEC SOURCES interns, for developing the python code and manually identify PBRs from photos.
Exemplary Figure Figure 4. FGF sites in California and Nevada. Blue dots denote the existing FGFs in the SCEC FGF database. Red dots denote the locations of newly processed PBR photos, whose size represents the number of photos at the same general location.
Linked Publications

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