The Unified Community Velocity Model (UCVM) Software

Description

The SCEC Unified Community Velocity Model (UCVM) software framework is a collection of software tools that provide a standard query interface to seismic velocity models. Once a seismic velocity model is registered into UCVM, it can be queried and combined with other velocity models through the UCVM software interface.

UCVM was developed as an interdisciplinary research collaboration involving geoscientists and computer scientists. UCVM geoscience research includes identification and assembly of existing California velocity models into a state-wide model and improvements to existing velocity models. UCVM computer science research includes definition of a easy-to-use CVM query interface, integration of regional 3D and geotechnical models, and automated CVM evaluation processing capabilities.

UCVM is open-source scientific software designed to support earth scientists, civil engineers, and other groups interested in detailed information about earth properties. UCVM is primarily used by scientists to work with earth material properties on regional scales. One important use of UCVM is to create simulation meshes used in high resolution 3D wave propagation simulations.

Table of Contents

1. Software Documentation
2. Installation
3. Usage
4. Support
5. Citation
6. Contributing
7. Credits
8. License

Installation

UCVM was developed to support seismic simulations run on high-performance computing systems, so it is designed to compile and run on Linux-based computers. Before installing UCVM, they should be aware that there are several ways to get access to UCVM without installing the software on your own Linux computer. Below we outline several of the options:

1. SCEC UCVM Web viewer Users can query UCVM velocity models, without installing UCVM, using the UCVM website.
2. UCVM Docker Images Users can run UCVM in Docker on their local computers including laptops. Users can install free Docker software on most computers (e.g. Linux, MacOS, Windows) then run an UCVM Docker image in a terminal window on their computer.
3. Installation Instructions for Linux Systems User can install UCVM on Linux system. Advanced users that want to install many of the UCVM models, or that want to run large parallel queries of the CVM models, should install the UCVM software on a Linux system. UCVM software is developed on USC Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) Linux cluster which provide MPI libraries. The UCVM software framework has several MPI-based executables. These executables are built using the automake system if the required MPI libraries are found in the installation computing environment.

Usage

Once installed, UCVM provides an executable program, called ucvm_query, that implements a query interface to multiple seismic velocity models.

ucvm_query

'ucvm_query' is the basic UCVM interface that queries velocity model of interest.

returns

The results are in a column oriented format. Abbreviations are like this:

The first three colums are the input values of lon (decimal degrees), lat (decimal degrees), and depth (meters). The other columns that are returned are information about the velocity model used provide the material properties. Crustal models, and Geotechnical Models can be stored and used seperately in UCVM. The contributions of each model are shown in columns 5-8 and 10-12, but the combined results returned in 14-16 are typically used by modelers.

Detailed descriptions of the UCVM return parameters are listed in this UCVM parameter summary provided in the UCVM documentation.

Support

Support for UCVM is provided by the Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Research Computing Group. This group supports several research software distributions including UCVM. Users can report issues and make feature requests using UCVM's github-based issue tracking link below. Developers will also respond to emails sent to the SCEC software contact listed below.

1. UCVM Github Issue Tracker
2. Email Contact: software@scec.org

Citation

References, citations, and acknowledgements help us obtain continued support for the development of the UCVM software. If you use the UCVM software in your research, please include the citation of the UCVM paper in the references/bibliography section of your publication. This is more effective than you providing in-text acknowledgements.

• Preferred Reference: Small, P., Gill, D., Maechling, P. J., Taborda, R., Callaghan, S., Jordan, T. H., Ely, G. P., Olsen, K. B., & Goulet, C. A. (2017). The SCEC Unified Community Velocity Model Software Framework. Seismological Research Letters, 88(5). doi:10.1785/0220170082

• Preferred Software Citation: Small, Patrick E., Maechling, Philip J., & Su, Mei-Hui. (2022). The Unified Community Velocity Model (UCVM) (22.7.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7033687

• Example Acknowlegement: We would like to acknowledge the use of the SCEC Unified Community Velocity Model Software (Small 2022) in this research.

Along with citing the UCVM software, researchers should also cite the appropriate publication for any of the velocity models they use in their research. Citations for individual velocity models are included in the Credits file in this repository, and in the GitHub repository that has been created for each model.

Contributing

We welcome contributions to the UCVM software framework. Geoscientists can register their seismic velocity models into UCVM and software developers can improve and extend the UCVM software. An overview of the process for contributing seismic models or software updates to the UCVM Project is provided in the UCVM contribution guidelines. UCVM contributors agree to abide by the code of conduct found in our Code of Conduct guidelines.

Credits

Development of UCVM is a group effort. A list of developers that have contributed to the UCVM Software framework are listed in the Credits.md file in this repository.

License

The UCVM software is distributed under the BSD 3-Clause open-source license. Please see the LICENSE.txt file for more information.