500 billion data points reveal how quakes could ripple through cities

Researchers led by David McCallen, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories, are using supercomputers to develop highly advanced earthquake simulations that predict how seismic waves propagate and impact urban infrastructure. Their project, part of the Exascale Computing Project, has produced EQSIM (Earthquake Simulation Coder), a tool that models earthquake dynamics with unprecedented detail by incorporating geological factors such as fault type, soil composition, and surface topography. These simulations reveal how seismic energy is amplified or dampened by local geology and how buildings and critical infrastructure like water and power systems might respond or fail during earthquakes. Using the Frontier supercomputer, which operates at exascale performance, the team can run simulations covering hundreds of kilometers with up to 500 billion grid points, generating massive datasets of about 3 petabytes per simulation. This computational power allows researchers to identify seismic "hot spots" where ground motions concentrate, varying significantly by location. Notably, the research has found that smaller earthquakes can sometimes