IRIS DMS Participation in the SCEC ITR Project

The Southern California Earthquake Center has received a National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant to design and develop a Community Modeling Environment -- a technology "collaboratory" infrastructure supporting the large-scale, distributed modeling and simualtion of the geophysical phenomena of earthquakes. With its distributed and configuarble environment, the CME infrastructure will improve simulation results and understanding by supporting the integration of - and interaction between - remote and disparate research efforts, and by allowing the replacement of individual components of the model with others of greater accuracy or refinement or simply to test new hypotheses.

Another component of the CME effort is the development of an ontology for geophysics. Loosely, an ontology is a body of knowledge and understanding about a particular subject that describes and defines all of the elements - both concepts and objects - within that subject area and all of the relationships and interactions between those elements. IRIS will use the FISSURES object model as a starting point from which to begin developing a seismology ontology. The FISSURES object model describes the major seismic objects involved in the gathering and analysis of seismic data and, with extensions, simulation information. With such an ontology, users of the CME will more easily be able to assemble appropriate components to construct computational pathways for their desired results.

Submitted by Linus Kamb, IRIS DMC