Welcome

You have reached the WIKI of the Source-Inversion Validation (SIV) initiative!

The SIV-project aims at quantifying the uncertainty in earthquake source inversion through a series of verification & validation experiments.

Seismic data (often augmented with geodetic measurements) are used since the early 1980s for imaging kinematic properties of earthquake ruptures on geological faults. However, the inherent uncertainties and limitations of these inversions are still not well understood and quantified. Incompletely known Earth structure, simplifications in assumed fault geometry, data processing steps, parameterization of the inversion problem, and the ill-posedness of the inversion problem itself strongly affect the resulting source image. Yet, these different aspects are rarely treated comprehensively in any source-inversion study to fully capture the uncertainty of the kinematic rupture model.

The SIV-project gathers seismologists working in earthquake source inversion to perform a series of (code) verification and (inversion) validation experiments to better understand the uncertainty in past and current source-inversion approaches. The goals is to develop strategies for rigorous uncertainty quantification for future earthquake source studies. By varying the type of benchmarks, the input model behavior and properties, the type and quality of available data and auxiliary information, we aim at better understanding the resolution and robustness of current finite-fault inversion strategies and codes, but also their limitations.

The SIV project is initiated and lead by Martin Mai (King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, KAUST), Danjiel Schorlemmer (GFZ Potsdam) and Morgan Page (USGS Pasadena).

The menu-items below lead you to different subsections (see Menu section to the left):

Introduction -- general information about the project

News -- check regularly for upcoming events

Exercises -- database of exercises/experiments

Workshops -- information on past and upcoming workshops

Discussion -- discussion forum on many source-inversion related topics ... and more

Downloads -- section to download exercise descriptions, data files, auxiliary material

Participants -- list of registered participants

Benchmark Database -- online benchmark (exercise) comparison tool

eQuake-RC -- Earthquake Research Resources website