Fergie's Tech Blog

California Computer Models 'The Big One'

Sharon Bernstein writes in The Los Angeles Times:

A study of how earthquake waves from the San Andreas fault travel through different types of Southern California soil marks what scientists say is a promising first step in an ambitious effort to pinpoint neighborhoods and even individual city blocks where the shaking would be most severe.

Researchers from the Southern California Earthquake Center hope to duplicate the research on hundreds of faults around the region, producing maps that show specific areas that face the greatest danger from the quake waves.

The scientists simulated two magnitude 7.7 temblors along the San Andreas fault to determine how the waves from the quakes would move across the region's topography.

They found that the waves from the San Andreas fault funneled northwest into the Los Angeles Basin, moving through the valleys that line the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains like water rushing through a trench.

posted by Fergie @ 5/28/2006 12:19:00 PM