Rapid Scientific Response as an Educational Opportunity Integrating Geoscience and Advanced Visualization

Natural disasters provide important opportunities to conduct original scientific research. We present the results of a graduate course at the University of California, Davis centered on rapid scientific response to the 24 August magnitude 6.0 South Napa earthquake. Students from both geoscience and computer visualization formed collaborative teams to conduct original research, choosing from diverse research topics including mapping of the surface rupture, both in the field and remotely, production and analysis of three-dimensional scans of offset features, topographic point-cloud differencing, identification and mapping of pre-historic earthquake scarps, analysis of geodetic data for pre-earthquake fault loading rate and modeling of finite fault offset, aftershock distribution, construction and 3D visualization of earth structure and seismic velocity models, shaking intensity from empirical models, and earthquake rupture simulation.