3D Visualization of the Earthquake
FEBRUARY 28, 2001 -- A 3D VRML visualization of the precise location of the 6.8 Seattle/Tacoma earthquake that occurred this morning can be found on the web. The orange ball indicates the earthquake's hypocenter; the yellow dots are hypocenters of previous earthquakes from 1988-1995 with a magnitude greater than 3. The tick marks on the map's depth axis represent 10 km distances down into the earth; the depth axis has been exaggerated three times normal so the data can be more easily read.

Graphics simulations of earthquake phenomena are being collaboratively developed by Paul Morin of the Geology and Geophysics department at the University of Minnesota and Media Union/University of Michigan, Peter van Keken of the Geology department at University of Michigan, and Jason Leigh of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This collaboration is supported through the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation grid (NEESgrid) integration project being organized by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and funded by the NEES program at the National Science Foundation.

The visualizations were produced using the software package Iris Explorer from NAG, Inc.. It was created on an SGI Octane within an hour of the first solutions. You will need the CosmoPlayer to see the VRML and it only works on Windows and SGIs.

click on images to enlarge

Static 3-D view from the south

Static 3-D view from the south east

Static 3-D view from the west
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