MAEviz: Bridging the Time-from-Discovery Gap between Seismic Research and Decision Making

MAEviz is an open-source project that helps reduce the time from discovery gap that exists between researchers, practitioners, and decision makers by integrating the latest research findings, most accurate data, and new methodologies into a single software product. It was developed as a platform to perform seismic risk assessment based on the mid-america earthquake (MAE) center research in the consequence-based risk management (CRM) framework. MAEviz is built upon an open source, extensible software platform developed at NCSA using the eclipse rich client platform (RCP). The example shown in the poster is network-based seismic retrofit (NBSR) analysis. The analysis solves a typical problem faced by decision makers that, given a fixed budget, which combination of bridges and retrofit methods would minimize the societal cost of an earthquake. It clearly shows how new science can be put quickly into the hands of the decision makers, thus bridging the gap between research and practical application. MAEviz is shown to be a powerful tool that can currently be used to assist decision makers in preparing for and mitigating the consequences of seismic hazards. Moreover, the extensible architecture of MAEviz allows it to be easily adapted to integrate newly discovered science and data, both in the area of seismic risk assessment, as well as other future research areas.