Right, we do want a seismologist's perspective on this. And @seisman is our man! What say you?

@joa-quim @PaulWessel I don't got what you're going to do. Can you explain more details?

@joa-quim , links please.

Well, I gave links (two). More, USGS shake maps
I have two modules that:

Compute the Vs30 (Vs velocities on the upper 30 meters) just from topography

vs30 palu_bat.grd -C1 -Glix_vs.grd

use that Vs30 grid and compute the shake map (intensity) of the recent Indonesia earthquake.

shake lix_vs.grd -Glixo.grd -Lline.dat -Ci -V -M7.5

The question is, is this an interesting module to have in GMT (in meca)?

Yes you did give links, sorry.

I'm afraid this is falling on the oblivion category. @seisman, do you have a opinion on this?

Sorry for the late reply. I just came back from a field trip.

I know little about Vs30 and shakemap. The idea of shakemap is interesting. However, USGS has provided a Python module and CLI (https://github.com/usgs/shakemap) to generate near-real-time shakemap. Do we really need to rewrite it with GMT?

Well, I did it because I already had it in Mirone but it was using GMT4. Since I hate loosing things I migrate it to GMT5 and created the vs30 module that is way more simple to use (and build) than the official version.

It's true that USGS has it but

1. It's a Python code, not an executable
2. Mac OSX or Linux operating systems. I.e, no Windows.

@joa-quim Feel free to add it into GMT. I'll try my best to answer related questions.

As we try to finish up GMT 6 for release, adding modules makes this more complicated, no. We have to draw the line soon.

I don't mind to leave this to a 6.1 but by now I would like to have a copy in other place than my local repo only.

@leouieda and I discussed this and you could simply create a branch specifically for working on the shakemap but not merge it to master until after 6 is released.

That's the solution I thought too. I only have to learn how to keep my local branch in sync with master, so that I can build a dll updated with all to use from Mirone.

@joa-quim you can git merge master from your branch any time you want to sync.

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had activity in the last 30 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 7 days. Thank you for your contributions.

Opened issue on USGS interest at vs30 grids generation
usgs/earthquake-global_vs30#45