Broadband Platform Upcoming Release

Fig 1: Broadband Platform.

The SCEC Broadband Platform is a software system which generates 0-100 Hz seismograms for historical and scenario earthquakes in California, Eastern North America, and Japan.

Overview

The goal of the SCEC Broadband Simulation Platform is to generate broadband (0-100 Hz) ground motions for earthquakes. The SCEC Broadband Platform is a collaborative software development project involving SCEC researchers, research engineers, graduate students, and the SCEC/CME software development group. SCEC scientific groups have contributed modules to the Broadband Platform including rupture generation, low- and high-frequency seismogram synthesis, non-linear site effects, and visualization. These complex scientific codes have been integrated into a system that supports easy on-demand computation of broadband seismograms. The SCEC Broadband Platform is designed to be used by both scientific and engineering researchers with some experience interpreting ground motion simulations.

Users may calculate broadband seismograms for both historical earthquakes (validation events including Northridge and Loma Prieta) and user-defined earthquakes. The platform produces a variety of data products, including broadband seismograms, rupture visualizations, and several goodness-of-fit plots. Users can install the platform on their own machine, verify that it is installed correctly, and run their own simulations on demand without requiring knowledge of any of the code involved. Users may run a validation event, supply their own simple source description, or provide a rupture description in SRF format. Users may specify their own list of stations or use a provided list. Currently the platform supports stations and events in Southern California, the Bay Area, the Mojave Desert, Eastern United States, Eastern Canada, Central and Western Japan. Users may select among various method that include rupture generation, low-frequency synthesis, high-frequency synthesis, and incorporation of site effects, with the option of running a goodness-of-fit comparison against observed or simulated seismograms. These codes have been validated against recorded ground motions from real events.

The Broadband Platform was implemented using software development best practices, including version control, user documentation, acceptance tests, and formal releases, with the aim of ease of installation and use.

Current Release

The current official release of Broadband Platform is v15.3.0. This is a new version of the platform that includes a large number of new capabilities. It is the first major release of the Broadband Platform since version 14.3.0, released in March 2014. Details of the new features along with several bugs fixes are provided in the release notes and the "changes" section below. New, and old Broadband platform users should work with this version of the software, and we recommend current Broadband platform users migrate to this new version whenever possible.

Dependencies

Broadband has the following dependencies:

• Python 2.6+ with
  • NumPy 1.4.1
  • Scipy 0.7.2
  • matplotlib 1.0.1
  • PyProj 1.8.9
• GNU compilers (gcc, gfortran) v4.5.1

Please refer to the Broadband User Guide v15.3.0 for more details about the specific versions required for each of the packages above. This version of the Broadband Platform does NOT require Intel compilers.

Documentation Including Installation Instructions

User Guide Wiki (includes installation instructions):

• Broadband User Guide v15.3.0
• Broadband File Format Guide

Downloads

To install and use the Broadband platform, you need the source code, one or more Green's Functions packages, and optionally one or more Validation packages. The Broadband Platform contains cumulative improvements to the geoscientific codes and software infrastructure. We recommend use of the most recent version of the Broadband Platform, unless you are trying to reproduce results generated with an earlier version of the platform.

Users that are upgrading from previous version of the Broadband Platform will need to retrieve new versions of all the Broadband Platform packages as there have been significant changes in all the packages since the previous 14.3.0 release.

There are detailed installation instructions in the Broadband User Guide v15.3.0.

Detailed instructions to setup the Broadband Platform as a local installation on a Linux or Mac computer are provided in the Broadband User Guide v15.3.0. Briefly, they can be summarized in the following steps:

1. The software can be installed in an account on a Linux or Mac OS X computer with at least 10GB of disk storage and C, Fortran, and Python software installed.
2. From the Linux/Mac computer, start a web browser and point to this download page. Alternatively, you can download the files to a different machine and use FTP or SFTP to copy them over.
3. After downloading each file, run the md5sum program to confirm you have an undamaged version of the distribution files by comparing the md5sum provided in the .md5 files against the one calculated at the local computer.
4. Uncompress the distribution (tar.gz) files into the proper directory structure as described in the Broadband User Guide v15.3.0.
5. Build the executables by running the top level makefile.
6. Configure your environment by adding a few Broadband Platform variables to your shell's environment.
7. Confirm the code is built correctly by running UnitTests.
8. Confirm the code runs correctly on your system by running AcceptanceTests.
9. Use the platform for research purposes.

Current Broadband Platform Release

The current SCEC Broadband platform release is v15.3.0. Links to the source distribution and Green's Functions and Validation packages are listed in the table below:

Required Files

The following packages are the minimum set of files required to run the Broadband Platform. This set includes files needed for running the Unit and Acceptance tests.

• Source Distribution (56MB): BBP 15.3.0, BBP 15.3.0.md5
• LA Basin Model (1.4GB): LA Basin, LA Basin.md5 (Needed for Unit and Acceptance Tests)
• Northridge Validation Event (17MB): Northridge, Northridge.md5 (Needed for Acceptance Tests)

Additional Regions/Velocity Models

The following packages are optional downloads. Users should download packages for the regions they are interested in.

• Mojave (1.7GB): Mojave, Mojave.md5
• Northern California (1.4GB): NoCal, NOCAL.md5
• Western Japan (1.8GB): Western Japan, Western Japan.md5
• Central Japan (1.8GB): Central Japan, Central Japan.md5
• Eastern Canada (3.3GB): Eastern Canada, Eastern Canada.md5
• Eastern United States (3.5GB): Eastern United States, Eastern United States.md5

GMPE Verification Pacakges

• GMPEs (3.2MB): GMPEs, GMPE.md5 (Requires both LA Basin and Northern California Regions)

Additional Validation Events

• Whittier Narrows (3.1MB): Whittier, Whittier.md5 (Requires LA Basin Region)
• NR (2.7MB): NR, NR.md5 (Requires LA Basin Region)
• Chino Hills (7.2MB): Chino Hills, ChinoHills.md5 (Requires LA Basin Region)
• Loma Prieta (14MB): Loma Prieta, Loma Prieta.md5 (Requires Northern California Region)
• LOMAP (7.3MB): LOMAP, LOMAP.md5 (Requires Northern California Region)
• Alum Rock (7.7MB): Alum Rock, AlumRock.md5 (Requires Northern California Region)
• Landers (6.7MB): Landers, Landers.md5 (Requires Mojave Region)
• North Palm Springs (2.8MB): North Palm Springs, NPS.md5 (Requires Mojave Region)
• Saguenay (3.4MB): Saguenay, Saguenay.md5 (Requires Eastern Canada Region)
• Riviere-du-Loup (9.8MB): Riviere du Loup, RDL.md5 (Requires Eastern Canada Region)
• Mineral, VA (3.8MB): Mineral, Mineral.md5 (Requires Eastern United States Region)
• Tottori (27MB): Tottori, Tottori.md5 (Requires Western Japan Region)
• Niigata (28MB): Niigata, Niigata.md5 (Requires Central Japan Region)

Installation Guide and Users Guide - Documentation

• Broadband User Guide v15.3.0
• Broadband v15.3.0 Release Notes

Supporting Materials

• Broadband Poster from SSA 2014 - Fabio Silva (PDF, 8.3MB)
• Broadband poster from AGU 2014 (PDF, 13.8MB)
• Broadband overview talk from SC10 (PPT, 3.7 MB)
• Technical diagrams of Broadband module relationships (PPTX, 16 KB)

Help

For assistance with the Broadband Platform, you may

• Email software @ scec.org with specific questions
• Browse and submit new trouble tickets, or feature requests, at Broadband Trac site. SCEC user login is required to submit trouble tickets this way.

License

SCEC Broadband Platform software distributions are released under an Apache 2.0 open-source license as described here Broadband License.

Broadband Platform Developers and Collaborators

• Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center
• San Diego State University Dept of Geological Sciences
• SCEC
• SCEC/CME Project
• ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
• University of California, Berkeley
• U.C. Santa Barbara Dept of Earth Sciences
• UCSB Institute for Crustal Studies
• University of Nevada Reno
• University of Western Ontario
• URS Corporation

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We post BBP user questions and our response to a Broadband Platform Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page:

• BBP FAQ

See Also

• SWUS Project
• Broadband Platform 2007
• SCEC Software Downloads
• SCEC Wiki Main
• SCEC Home Page
• Broadband User Guide Current
• Broadband User Guide Development
• Broadband Server
• Broadband Hanging Wall Simulation
• Broadband Development
• Broadband Platform Installation Guide Current
• Broadband Platform User Guide Current

Older Broadband Platform Releases

Earlier version of the broadband platform software and data distributions are provided to support existing Broadband platform users. However, we recommend all users upgrade to the most recent version at first opportunity. Earlier releases can be found in the Broadband Platform Previous Releases page.

Development version

If you're an advanced user, interested in working with the latest development version of the platform, you can check it out from

svn co https://source.usc.edu/svn/broadband/trunk

Details about working with the development version are provided in the User Guide.

The next version of Broadband is expected to be released in Q3 of 2015.

References

1. Graves, R. W. and A. Pitarka (2010). “Broadband Ground-Motion Simulation Using a Hybrid Approach.” Bull. Seis. Soc. Am., 100(5A), pp. 2095-2123, doi: 10.1785/0120100057. link
2. Mai, P.M., W. Imperatori, and K.B. Olsen (2010). “Hybrid broadband ground motion simulations: combining long-period deterministic synthetics with high frequency multiple S-to-S back-scattering.” Bull. Seis. Soc. Am., 100(5A), pp. 2124-2142, doi: 10.1785/0120080194. link
3. Schmedes, J., R. J. Archuleta, and D. Lavallée (2010). “Correlation of earthquake source parameters inferred from dynamic rupture simulations.” J. Geophys. Res., 115, B03304, doi:10.1029/2009JB006689. link