Computation Earthquake Physics PART II: Introduction

Abstract

Large earthquakes are catastrophic natural disasters which can potentially cause massive casulaties and huge property loss. In the beginning of the new century, large earthquakes violently struck the world, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Nearly 300,000 people were killed by the magnitude 9.0 Northern Sumatra Earthquake and tsunami, and the magnitude 7.8 Pakistan earthquake of October 8th, 2005, which resulted in 90,000 deaths. In the meantime, there has been great progress in computational earthquake physics. New understanding of earthquake processes, numerous ideas on earthquake dynamics and complexity, next-generation numerical models and methods, higher performance supercomputers, and new data and analysis methods are emerging. These include the SERVO gird and iSERVO, LSM (Lattice Solid particle simulation Model); Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator (ACcESS); Japan’s Earth Simulator; GeoFEM; GeoFEST; QuakeSim; LURR (Load-Unload Response Ratio); earthquake Critical Point Hypothesis, PI (Pattern Informatics), Critical Sensitivity, friction laws and seismicity, episodic tremor, the Virtual California model, interaction between faults and the interactions between earthquakes, ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic), SMDM (Statistical Mesoscopic Damage Mechanics) and MFEM (Multi-scale Finite-Element Model), among others.