Advancing Community Benchmarking for Sequences of Earthquakes and Aseismic Slip: Objectives and Planned Activities of the SCEC SEAS Technical Activity Group

Taeho Kim, Mohamed Abdelmeguid, Eric M. Dunham, Brittany A. Erickson, Valere R. Lambert, Pierre Romanet, & Prithvi Thakur

Submitted August 30, 2026, SCEC Contribution #15609, 2026 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #TBD

The SCEC (Statewide California Earthquake Center) Sequences of Earthquakes and Aseismic Slip (SEAS) community has developed benchmarks for earthquake-cycle models for more than a decade. Definitions and results are openly available at https://strike.scec.org/cvws/seas/, providing reference solutions for code verification and a shared framework for comparing methods across more than 14 modeling groups. Participation remains open to all.

The SEAS Technical Activity Group (TAG) will coordinate the next stage of this effort, strengthening the accuracy, efficiency, and reproducibility of physics-based earthquake-cycle simulations while moving benchmarks toward California fault-system applications. Using geometries informed by the SCEC Community Fault Model (CFM), the TAG will compare complex earthquake sequences and identify trusted products for scientific machine learning (SciML), surrogate modeling, and reduced-order modeling. These efforts connect code verification to hazard-relevant earthquake science.

Planned activities span four linked tasks. First, the TAG plans to synthesize BP8 and BP9. BP8, a 3D fluid-injection benchmark, was released at the end of July 2026; BP9, a dipping-fault benchmark with depth-dependent effective normal stress, is forthcoming. This effort will compare results, identify numerical sensitivities, and prepare comparison products. Second, the TAG aims to develop CFM-informed multifault benchmarks with branches, stepovers, and intersections to explore rupture cascades, arrest, recurrence variability, and regular-to-irregular transitions. Third, it plans to develop standardized post-processing methods and metrics for comparing catalog-level datasets across codes. Finally, we plan to host two remote workshops to coordinate benchmark development and invite community input on how SEAS datasets and validation metrics could support future SciML and reduced-order modeling.
Activities will draw on current SEAS working groups. Surveys, remote meetings, and workshops will guide benchmark selection, outputs, comparison metrics, and publication plans. Benchmark descriptions, participant results, comparison scripts where available, reference solutions, metrics, and comparison products will be shared through the public SCEC SEAS and CRESCENT DET platforms, with opportunities for collaboration across other SCEC TAGs.

We appreciate the community's continued engagement and welcome feedback on these new directions for the SEAS TAG.

Citation
Kim, T., Abdelmeguid, M., Dunham, E. M., Erickson, B. A., Lambert, V. R., Romanet, P., & Thakur, P. (2026, 08). Advancing Community Benchmarking for Sequences of Earthquakes and Aseismic Slip: Objectives and Planned Activities of the SCEC SEAS Technical Activity Group. Poster Presentation at 2026 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Fault and Rupture Mechanics (FARM)