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IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon

EuroHPC-prosjekt ChEESE-2P, Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth - Second Phase

Alternative title: EuroHPC-prosjekt ChEESE-2P, Senter for Fremragende Forskning inne Faste Jords Fysikk - Fase to

Awarded: NOK 2.5 mill.

Understanding Earth processes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, requires the use of computer models. A key to advancing our knowledge and being able to simulate these phenomena calls for High Performance Computing (HPC) exploitation. This project is the continuation of a European Center of Excellence (ChEESE), where simulation codes and workflows covering a wide range of Earth physics are being prepared and optimized to be able to run on some of the most powerful computers worldwide. These computers aim towards so called Exascale computations, which are calculations involving at least one billion billions Floating Point operations (FLOP) per second. An important objective is to pursue this technological advancement both for tackling scientific grand challenges and for finding solutions to societal challenges. To this end, the project will provide optimized tools for seismic, volcanic, and tsunami threats that can be used for both long term hazard planning, and for rapid computations that can be used in more acute situations. This will allow the use of Earth system computer codes to problems of unprecedented scale that were previously out of reach. The Norwegian part of the project relates to the tsunami hazard analysis. Two different developments will be undertaken here: i) Providing a high resolution a global probabilistic tsunami hazard service that allow users to carry out local probabilistic tsunami hazard analysis at high resolution at any location worldwide and use this to develop a high-resolution global tsunami hazard map. ii) Develop a complex multi-source tsunami model combining processes from earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, and acoustic pressure to tsunami generation and propagation. The model will be used to simulate global propagation of the tsunami emerging from the 2022 Tonga eruption.

This project aims at implementing the second phase of the Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE-2P). Solid Earth (SE) sciences address fundamental problems in understanding the formation, composition, and the dynamics of the geosphere from its deep interior to the surface. This encompasses also the study of geohazardous phenomena that originate in the Earth’s interior but that manifest at the interface with the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biosphere, causing a variety of natural hazards and geophysical extremes across all spatial and temporal scales. SE is extremely rich in computational challenges, requiring petascale and exascale infrastructures both to address fundamental scientific questions and to anticipate, mitigate, and manage the occurrence of geohazards and their impacts. The part of this project with Norwegian participation concerns adressing supercomputing challenges related to tsunami hazards. To this end, two novel computational pilot demonstrators within tsunami science will be established i) A global probabilistic tsunami hazard and uncertainty quantification development that allow users to carry out local probabilistic tusnami hazard analysis at high resolution at any location worldwide. ii) Complex multi-source tsunami modeling combining several multiphysics processes from earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, and acoustic pressure and atmospheric forcing to tsunami generation and propagation in a single workflow that allows coupling of different flagship codes. Present tsunami prediction capabilities in use today use a single source representation. It is hence necessary to develop a coupled approach where all the different physics can be tied together, including complex earthquake rupture, landslides, volcanic explosions, acoustic pressure and explosions, as well as atmospheric tsunami sources.

Funding scheme:

IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon