Seismology software: state of the practice

We analyzed the state of practice for software development in the seismology domain by comparing 30 software packages on four aspects: product, implementation, design, and process. We found room for improvement in most seismology software packages. The principal areas of concern include a lack of adequate requirements and design specification documents, a lack of test data to assess reliability, a lack of examples to get new users started, and a lack of technological tools to assist with managing the development process. To assist going forward, we provide recommendations for a document-driven development process that includes a problem statement, development plan, requirement specification, verification and validation (V&V) plan, design specification, code, V&V report, and a user manual. We also provide advice on tool use, including issue tracking, version control, code documentation, and testing tools.     

Damage localization under ambient vibration using changes in flexibility

In recent years, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has emerged as a new research area in civil engineering. Most existing health monitoring methodologies require direct measurement of input excitation for implementation. However, in many cases, there is no easy way to measure these inputs - or alternatively to externally excite the structure. Therefore, SHM methods based on ambient vibration have become important in civil engineering. In this paper, an approach is proposed based on the Damage Location Vector (DLV) method to handle the ambient vibration case. Here, this flexibility-matrix-based damage localization method is combined with a modal expansion technique to eliminate the need to measure the input excitation. As a by-product of this approach, in addition to determining the location of the damage, an estimate of the damage extent also can be determined. Finally, a numerical example analyzing a truss structure with limited sensors and noisy measurement is provided to verify the efficacy of the proposed approach. Sponsored by: Notional Science Foundation Grant CMS 99-00234     

Problems associated with luminescence dating of Late Quaternary glacial sediments in the NW Scottish Highlands

Linking the timing of glacial episodes and behaviour to climatic shifts that are documented in ice and marine sedimentary archives is key to understanding ocean-land interactions. In the NW Scottish Highlands a large number of closely spaced (‘hummocky’) moraines formed at retreating glacier margins. Independent age control on one palaeo-glacier limit is consistent with the timing of Younger Dryas (YD) glaciation in the area, but adjacent glacier lobes have remained undated due to the lack of sites and material for ¹⁴C dating. Direct dating of ice-marginal moraines using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques has never been attempted before in Scotland, but if successful, they may be the most appropriate methods for constraining the age of sediment deposition in the absence of organic material. Coarse-grained quartz and K-feldspar minerals from supraglacial sheet flow deposits and glacilacustrine sediments within ice-marginal moraines were analysed using the single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol. Independent age control and clear geomorphological relationships indicate that all samples should yield YD or post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ages. Quartz OSL shine down curves showed low luminescence sensitivity, significant medium-to-slow components, a weak fast component, and scattered SAR data; Linearly Modulated-OSL (LM-OSL) measurements confirmed that the fast component was weak or absent. In contrast, feldspar infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) was highly sensitive with excellent SAR data. However, SAR data from 3 mm diameter aliquots of feldspar (200 grains) give higher than expected equivalent doses (D_e) by an order of magnitude. SAR measurements of small clusters of feldspar grains (ranging from 1–8) considerably broaden the apparent D_e distribution, but even the lowest value is about 2–3 times the expected D_e. Two possibilities arise to explain the quartz and feldspar data: (1) that glacial sequences in the NW Highlands re-work inherited (older) glacial deposits and that some of the pre-Devensian existing glacial landforms have only been modified during Devensian glaciation; or (2) that the sedimentary processes operating in these ice-marginal environments are not conducive to adequate bleaching of quartz and feldspar grains. Our study implies that ice-proximal supraglacial sediments from this region in NW Scotland reflect older ages of deposition, but dating YD sediments has not been possible.     

Visualising data distributions with kernel density estimation and reduced chi-squared statistic

The application of frequency distribution statistics to data provides objective means to assess the nature of the data distribution and viability of numerical models that are used to visualize and interpret data. Two commonly used tools are the kernel density estimation and reduced chi-squared statistic used in combination with a weighted mean. Due to the wide applicability of these tools, we present a Java-based computer application called KDX to facilitate the visualization of data and the utilization of these numerical tools.