New developments and applicability of the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) testing framework

Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) began development of the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) in January of 2006 with funding provided by the W. M. Keck Foundation. Since that time, scientists and software engineers have applied the scientific and computational principles of CSEP to develop several operational testing centers. The W. M. Keck Foundation Testing Center at SCEC, designed to conduct computational earthquake forecast experiments in California, began operations on September 1, 2007 and has been improved, optimized, and extended over the past four years. The implementation of the SCEC Testing Center has been guided by four design goals proposed by the Regional Earthquake Likelihood Models (RELM) working group: (1) Controlled Environment, (2) Transparency, (3) Comparability, and (4) Reproducibility. By meeting these goals, the CSEP testing framework can provide clear descriptions of how all registered earthquake forecasts are produced and evaluated. As of August 2011, there are four testing centers established around the globe, with 224 models under test. CSEP software is also available for personal use by scientists to perform independent study and evaluation of their model prior submitting it to the Testing Center (http://northridge.usc.edu/trac/csep/wiki/MiniCSEP). The SCEC Testing Center hosts intermediate-term and short-term alarm-based and rate-based forecasts for California, the Western Pacific, and a global testing region. We describe how the CSEP Testing Center at SCEC has been constructed to meet the design goals; we also present recent developments of the Testing Center and share our experiences operating the center since its inception. Additionally, we discuss how the CSEP infrastructure is now being applied to geodetic transient detection and earthquake early warning experiments.