Upgrading of Computer Facility for Research in Seismology

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

0214069 Ekstrom This grant provides support to upgrade the Harvard Seismology computing facility in order to facilitate a broad range of research in seismology and geophysics. The upgrade will include a fast multiprocessor server with large shared memory and a large-volume fast-access disk array. The activities supported by the new infrastructure include earthquake studies focused around the Harvard CMT project. An important component of this project is the systematic analysis of all earthquakes with magnitudes greater than approximately 5.2 around the world, using digital data from globally distributed seismographs. A second component of the supported activities involves imaging of the elastic properties of the Earth's interior. This research is pursued by development of new data sets and the joint inversion of various existing data sets, such as absolute and differential travel times, surface-wave dispersion curves, full waveforms, and normal-mode spectra. The upgraded computer facilities will allow a more detailed parameterization of Earth structure and a higher fidelity imaging of the Earth's interior. ***