[CIG-SHORT] Short-Term Crustal Dynamics priorities

[Mark Simons]

Dear all,

Despite all the comments in what follows, I want to heartily 
commend/thank Brad, Charles, Matt, and Sue for their heroic efforts to 
build PyLith up to its current state and for their enthusiastic support 
of users.

---

PyLith suggestions:

It would be good if more priority was placed on getting PyLith up to the 
same the geophysical feature set as the original tecton (e.g., 
earthquake cycles, gravity, large deformation, basic forms of yielding 
and other material models).  Also, the additional features of full 
restart files/user define pre-stresses, Green's functions, and automatic 
time stepping will dramatically increase the number of problems that we 
can address with PyLith.  These are the features that were requested and 
listed as top priorities consistently over the last several workshops.

As a CIG development effort , I think it is important that we find ways 
to increase the user base of PyLith as quickly as possible - sometimes 
at the expense of "fancier" style improvement (AMR, higher order 
elements, or complex issues like non-linear fault constitutive laws).  
Thus in many ways, I would push for a reordering of the proposed PyLith 
development priority list/schedule, OR BETTER YET, the allocation of 
additional resources to let us make faster progress. 

Maybe, it is possible to build a dependency tree of each feature request 
so that we can see what can be developed in parallel and/or by people 
outside of the core developer group?  Then perhaps some thought can be 
put into finding ways to increase the number of contributing 
developers?  At present, it is difficult for others to contribute.

An additional feature for long term earthquake cycle modeling (and 
glacier modeling too!) is some kind of controllable mass flux out of a 
subset of the model boundaries.

Perhaps there should be some more explicit thought into how PyLith could 
contribute to glaciology?
---

I think the collection of a set of semi-analytic codes is fine as a 
community building excercise, especially if it is the community doing 
most of the heavy lifting and CIG is just facilitating the process.

---



Cheers,
Mark


Brad Aagaard wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> The Science Steering Committee will be meeting in two weeks to update the CIG 
> five-year rolling strategic plan. At this meeting, I will present our 
> priorities for software development by CIG. I have created two pages on the 
> CIG website to document our desires 
> (http://www.geodynamics.org/cig/workinggroups/short/workarea/planning/priorities2008/). 
> One page is devoted to development plans for PyLith while the other describes 
> our priorities year-by-year over the next five years. All content posted on 
> these pages is up for discussion.
>
> Some questions to help organize your thoughts:
>
> (1) What obstacles inhibit your abilities to create realistic models?
> (2) What modeling tools would eliminate/reduce these obstacles?
> (3) If you are using PyLith, what features do wish it had?
> (4) If you are not using PyLith, why? Are you waiting for a particular set of 
> features to be added? Is it too difficult to learn? Is it too slow? Is it too 
> inefficient?
> (5) Are you satisfied with the pace of PyLith development? Would you be 
> willing to work on PyLith development? What sort of training (if any) would 
> you need?
> (6) What other types of modeling tools, besides PyLith, do we want developed?
> (7) Are there useful semi-analytic codes that would be of great use if they 
> were more portable? documented? open-source? more efficient? Should we divert 
> resources from PyLith development to support this task?
>
> Please help define our needs and prioritize them for the coming years by 
> participating in this discussion. Send comments/suggestions to this mailing 
> list or visit the pages at the link above and add comments. NOTE: If you 
> respond directly to me with suggestions/comments, I will forward your 
> comments to this mailing list!
>
> If you are interested in participating in a 1 hour teleconference towards the 
> end of next week (May 21-23) to finalize this list of priorities, please let 
> me know what times on those days you are available.
>
> Thanks,
> Brad
> _______________________________________________
> CIG-SHORT mailing list
> CIG-SHORT at geodynamics.org
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>
>   

-- 

Mark Simons
Seismological Laboratory
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
TEL: 626-395-6984
FAX: 626/564-0715
WWW: www.gps.caltech.edu/~simons