Software

The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) develops, maintains, and supports a number of scientific software programs. This is the software download page for SCEC-supported software distributions. Information about software support is provided on each individual software distribution page.

Broadband Platform

The goal of the SCEC Broadband Simulation Platform is to generate ground motions for a particular earthquake scenario using deterministic low-frequency and stochastic high-frequency simulations. It provides multiple approaches for generating the rupture description, modeling high- and low-frequency wave propagation, and incorporating site amplification effects. These codes have been validated against recorded ground motions from real events, to increase confidence in their results. With the Broadband Platform, a user can select which combination of approaches to use and simulate an earthquake, producing seismograms which include high and low frequency data. Ultimately these seismograms can be used to improve ground motion attenuation models, resulting in more accurate predictions of future ground motions for building engineers.

• Support Level: Developed, maintained, and supported.

CVM-H

The CVM-H is a velocity model of crust and upper mantle structure in southern California developed by the SCEC community for use in fault systems analysis, strong ground motion prediction, and earthquake hazards assessment. The model describes seismic P- and S-wave velocities and densities, and is comprised of basin structures embedded in tomographic and teleseismic crust and upper mantle models.

• Support Level: Developed, maintained, and supported.

CVM-S

CVM-S is the original 3D Velocity Model for Southern California developed by SCEC between 1991 and 2002. Earlier versions of the CVM-S software are available on the SCEC Data Center web site. We have identified and fixed a number of software issues in the original CVM-S V4.0 code. We are posting a version of CVM-S 4 that includes all known software fixes. We believe this version is more robust than any earlier versions.

• Support Level: Accepting bug reports.

Support Levels

SCEC provides varying levels of support for scientific software packages. We describe the level of support for each software package using the Computational Infrastructure in Geodynamics (CIG) software support levels. In order, from greatest to least, our software support levels are (1) Developed, maintained, and supported (2) Maintained and supported (3) Accepting bug reports.

SCEC Software Release Policies

SCEC software engineering group has established standard practices for use when releasing new versions of publicly distributed scientific software. These practices are based on "best practices" for scientific software development established on SCEC's CSEP project and on SCEC's UseIT SCEC-VDO project, and within the seismological scientific software development groups including U.S.G.S., IRIS, and CIG.

Every SCEC/CME project that releases SCEC-developed and SCEC-supported software to the community is expected to provide the following materials before the software is released, unless there is a good reason not to follow these guidelines. Before the SCEC/CME software development group distributes a new version of software, a software project must have provide following items:

1. A public SCECpedia entry that provides an overview of the software project, the capabilities of the software, and a software release history.
2. Written software development information for the project including design overview, data sources, algorithms used, software language, development environment, run-time environment, and required software stack.
3. Source code under version control.
4. Automated make capability such as makefile or ant script.
5. Copyright statement included in source code distribution.
6. Issue tracking system (TRAC) site with a trouble ticket system and a connection to source code under version control.
7. Automated suite of unit tests designed to verify the software was downloaded, built, and installed correctly and is functional.
8. Automated suite of user-oriented acceptance tests typically-based on reference inputs and outputs compared to calculated results.
9. Automated build and test capability, such as CruiseControl, which will run the acceptance tests without manual interactions.
10. Release Version assigned using CSEP model of Yr.Mo.x (e.g. v10.8.0) with tags in version control system.
11. Source distribution in tar and zip format with manifest and md5-sum and instructions for downloading and installing these distributions.
12. Release Notes, as wiki and pdf, containing the following information:
    1. Software name (or system name) and description of purpose of software
    2. Link to public web page describing project
    3. Description of software capabilities
    4. Description of intended users
    5. Limitations or known bugs
    6. Version of current release
    7. Overview of changes including new capabilities of current release
    8. List of Trac tickets addressed in this release
    9. Software support email list
    10. Contact for Responsible scientists
    11. Contact for Responsible Software Engineer
    12. How to report software problem or request features
13. User documentation, as wiki and pdf, including:
    1. Computer User Guide to installing, building, verifying, and operating software
    2. Scientific User Guide to using software, running reference problem, and interpreting results

Scientific Software Distribution Examples

• SCEC Wiki
• Source Forge Earth Science Modeling Framework
• Geodynamics CIG
• CIG Software Download
• QuakeSim

CME Software Developments

• CVM Toolkit
• Virtual Shaker

Related Entries

• SCEC Software
• Software License
• Community Velocity Model
• Goodness of Fit

See Also

• List of All SCECpedia Pages
• SCEC Wiki Main Page
• SCEC Home Page