New Quake Study Center to Map Neighborhoods

A new earthquake center is being established in Los Angeles to focus and integrate research throughout Southern California as part of a program that should lead to the creation of precise maps that will define the seismic hazards for every neighborhood.

The Southern California Earthquake Center, headquartered at USC, will bring at least $5 million in new federal research money to this region each year.

The center is designed to give scientists a comprehensive understanding of the faults and geological conditions that threaten Southern California, and to make that information available to researchers and the community.

Creation of the center, which is expected to fill a major void in earthquake research, is being announced today by representatives of the universities and government agencies that are participating in the program. Funded mainly by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey, the center will also focus on earthquake predictions and fund some creative research projects that are considered too experimental for traditional grants.

Participants include UC San Diego, the NSF, USGS, Caltech, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, the state of California and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory.

The new center will concentrate on the geological processes that cause earthquakes.

The fundamental purpose will be to generate a “master model” of how the various geological forces interact in Southern California. This will provide the scientific basis for determining the seismic risk for all areas, according to Keiiti Aki, professor of geology at USC and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who will serve as science director of the center.

“The goal of the center is to improve our ability to make earthquake predictions in Southern California,” said Thomas Henyey, chairman of the USC geology department and executive director of the new center. “Not only for when and where earthquakes might occur, but also to predict the nature of the ground motions that will result from these earthquakes.”

Creation of a comprehensive model for Southern California should improve the ability of scientists to determine when seismic events--such as small quakes or deformation of the Earth’s crust--point toward an approaching danger, such as a great quake. To use that information effectively, scientists must understand how an earthquake will affect local areas, because the nature of the soil beneath a building largely determines how it will fare during an earthquake.