Urgent supercomputing of earthquakes: use case for civil protection

Abstract

Deadly earthquakes are events that are unpredictable, relatively rare and have a huge impact upon the lives of those who suffer their consequences. Furthermore, each earthquake has specific characteristics (location, magnitude, directivity) which, combined to local amplification and de-amplification effects, makes their outcome very singular. Empirical relations are the main methodology used to make early assessment of an earthquake's impact. Nevertheless, the lack of sufficient data registers for large events makes such approaches very imprecise. Physics-based simulators, on the other hand, are powerful tools that provide highly accurate shaking information. However, physical simulations require considerable computational resources, a detailed geological model, and accurate earthquake source information.

A better early assessment of the impact of earthquakes implies both technical and scientific challenges. We propose a novel HPC-based urgent seismic simulation workflow, hereafter referred to as Urgent Computing Integrated Services for EarthQuakes (UCIS4EQ), which can deliver, potentially, much more accurate short-time reports of the consequences of moderate to large earthquakes. UCIS4EQ is composed of four subsystems that are deployed as services and connected by means of a workflow manager. This paper describes those components and their functionality. The main objective of UCIS4EQ is to produce ground-shaking maps and other potentially useful information to civil protection agencies. The first demonstrator will be deployed in the framework of the Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE, https://cheese.coe.eu/, last access: 12 Feb. 2020).