Towards addressing CPU-intensive seismological applications in Europe

Abstract

Advanced application environments for seismic analysis help geoscientists to execute complex simulations to predict the behaviour of a geophysical system and potential surface observations. At the same time data collected from seismic stations must be processed comparing recorded signals with predictions. The EU-funded project VERCE ( http://verce.eu/ ) aims to enable specific seismological use-cases and, on the basis of requirements elicited from the seismology community, provide a service-oriented infrastructure to deal with such challenges. In this paper we present VERCE's architecture, in particular relating to forward and inverse modelling of Earth models and how the, largely file-based, HPC model can be combined with data streaming operations to enhance the scalability of experiments. We posit that the integration of services and HPC resources in an open, collaborative environment is an essential medium for the advancement of sciences of critical importance, such as seismology. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.