The SCEC Broadband Platform: Open-Source Software for Strong Ground Motion Simulation and Validation

Fabio Silva, Philip J. Maechling, Christine A. Goulet, & Thomas Jordan

Published August 14, 2017, SCEC Contribution #7611, 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #301

The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Broadband Platform (BBP) is a carefully integrated collection of open-source scientific software programs that can simulate broadband (0-100 Hz) ground motions for earthquakes at regional scales. The BBP can run earthquake rupture and wave propagation modeling software to simulate ground motions for well-observed historical earthquakes and to quantify how well the simulated broadband seismograms match the observed seismograms. The BBP can also run simulations for hypothetical earthquakes, often referred to as scenario simulations. In this case, users input an earthquake location, fault plane geometry and moment magnitude, a list of station locations, and a 1D velocity model for the region of interest, and the BBP software calculates ground motions for the specified stations.

The BBP scientific software modules implement kinematic rupture generation, low- and high-frequency seismogram synthesis using wave propagation through 1D layered velocity structures, several ground motion intensity measure calculations, and various ground motion goodness-of-fit tools. These modules are integrated into a software system that provides user-defined, repeatable, calculation of ground-motion seismograms, using multiple alternative ground motion simulation methods, and software utilities to generate tables, plots, and maps. The BBP has been developed over the last six years in a collaborative project involving geoscientists, earthquake engineers, graduate students, and SCEC scientific software developers.

The SCEC BBP software can be compiled and run on recent Linux systems with GNU compilers. It includes seven simulation methods, eight simulation regions covering California, Japan, Central and Eastern North America, and the ability to compare simulation results against empirical ground motion models (aka GMPEs). The latest version of the Broadband Platform, released in June 2017, includes a new simulation method, updates to several ground motion simulation methods, improvements to the cluster operation of the BBP, and a suite of new validation metrics.

Key Words
Broadband, Simulations, Validation, Open-Source, Software, BBP

Citation
Silva, F., Maechling, P. J., Goulet, C. A., & Jordan, T. (2017, 08). The SCEC Broadband Platform: Open-Source Software for Strong Ground Motion Simulation and Validation. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Community Modeling Environment (CME)