Liquefaction & Ground Failure

Scientific framing¶

Earthquake shaking can cause saturated, loose soils to lose strength and behave as a fluid — liquefaction — producing settlement, lateral spreading, and ground failure. Susceptibility depends on the antecedent hydromechanical state (saturation, water-table depth) coupled to the seismic ground-motion field, making it a coupling between the soil reanalysis and earthquake wavefields.

State variables & observables¶

(Liquefaction/ground-failure potential index, water-table depth, $V_s$ profiles, PGA/PGV; ground-motion and geotechnical observables.)

Data — what we ingest¶

(Link to DataHub.)

Models¶

(Link to ModelHub: ground-failure surrogate models, earthquake-wavefield reconstruction/forecasting, and their coupling.)

Evaluation & metrics¶

(Link to HazEvalHub: potential-index skill, spatial agreement with observed failures, calibration.)

Connection to use cases¶

Central to the 2001–2031 Nisqually earthquake use case.