Innovative Resources: Unified Community Velocity Model-Next: A Community-governed Cyberinfrastructure for Earthquake Science

Earthquakes pose serious risks to communities, infrastructure, and the economy. Scientists and engineers need reliable information about the ground beneath the surface to understand how shaking may move through regions. This project will make earthquake-related data easier to find, compare, share, and use. The project team will build an open resource that helps researchers, students, engineers, and public-sector partners work with underground models in a consistent way. The project will also support training through example materials and workshops. By improving access to trusted subsurface information, the project can contribute to better earthquake research and safer infrastructure planning. This project will modernize the Unified Community Velocity Model into UCVM-Next. This community-governed infrastructure will increase the usability of three-dimensional seismic velocity models. The work will replace legacy formats with standardized Zarr and TileDB systems. These systems support versioning, provenance, validation, and reproducibility. A lightweight Python interface will enable model queries, parameter inspection, comparison, and export of structured data subsets for high-performance computing workflows. The project will support ingestion of regional models and high-resolution datasets. These include distributed acoustic sensing, ambient noise imaging, and geotechnical surveys. UCVM-Next capabilities will enable model validation, uncertainty characterization, and model reuse across academia, government, and industry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2609584 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Ahmed Elbanna | Institution: University of Southern California, LOS ANGELES, CA | Award Amount: $590,400 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2609584 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2609584.html