California's 2600-mile long system of levees east of San Francisco is arguably the most worrisome infrastructure risk in America-called a "ticking time bomb" by some-whose failure would top the economic cost of Katrina. The berms supporting the levees protect half a million people, 4 million acres of farmland, and the drinking water supply for most of southern California. To help decide where to invest to protect these levees, a gigantic threat-assessment simulation software program is being used. It was constructed after Hurricane Katrina by 300 top scientists and engineers to see how waves and flood waters from 152 computer-simulated storms might swamp New Orleans. The software is being modified for California where the greater threat is earthquakes, but California has seven times the length of levees as New Orleans and they're in worse condition.

Questions:

1. What would be involved in changing the simulation threat from hurricanes to earthquakes?
2. What process do you think would be used to analyze the simulation results?

• You are encouraged to use external resources (e.g. websites, literature, etc.) to understand the project better. Also, please state all the assumptions you had to make for your answers.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Changing the simulation threat from hurricanes to earthquakes would involve several key steps Adjusting the modeling parameters The software program ... View the full answer