NSHM Database Generation

This repository contains a script, schema, and Python package for building and querying a SQLite database of fault geometry and rupture scenario data from the GNS National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) 2022.

Domain model

The database describes rupture scenarios: possible earthquakes formed by one or more faults rupturing together. The core hierarchy is

graph TD
    R["Rupture scenario"] --> F1["Fault A"]
    R --> F2["Fault B"]
    F1 --> P1["Fault plane"]
    F1 --> P2["Fault plane"]
    F2 --> P3["Fault plane"]

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• Rupture scenario — a single possible earthquake from the NSHM logic tree. It has a magnitude, area,length, and (usually) an annual rate of occurrence, and involves one or more faults.

• Fault — a fault (crustal) or a subdivision of a larger fault surface (subduction interface), belonging to a fault system (Crustal, Hikurangi, or Puysegur).

  Faults are grouped under a parent fault: for crustal fault systems, a parent fault is a named fault such as "Wellington: Wairarapa" that is made up of several along-strike segments (each a fault row); for the subduction interfaces (Hikurangi, Puysegur), every fault row is a section of the (single) subduction surface and currently maps one-to-one with its own parent_fault entry, distinguished by NSHM id rather than by name.

• Fault plane — one planar rectangular patch of a fault's surface, defined by the lat/lon of its four corners plus a top and bottom depth. A fault is represented by one or more of these planes (e.g. a bent or multi-segment fault trace), and a rupture's overall geometry is the union of the planes of every fault it involves.

A rupture typically involves many faults, and each fault can participate in many ruptures (a many-to-many relationship), so a fault's geometry is stored once and shared across every rupture scenario that includes it.

Database schema

The hierarchy above is implemented with the following tables (see nshmdb/schema/schema.sql):

Table	Represents	Key columns
rupture	A rupture scenario	rupture_id (PK), fault_system, nshm_id, magnitude, area, len, rate
rupture_faults	Join table linking ruptures to the faults they involve	rupture_id (FK → rupture), fault_id (FK → fault)
fault	A fault / fault section belonging to a parent fault	fault_id (PK), parent_id (FK → parent_fault), fault_system, nshm_id, rake, tect_type
fault_plane	One rectangular patch of a fault's geometry	plane_id (PK), fault_id (FK → fault), corner lat/lons, top_depth, bottom_depth
parent_fault	A named fault	parent_id (PK), name
magnitude_frequency_distribution	Per-fault magnitude/rate pairs (MFD), used to estimate a fault's activity rate at a given magnitude	fault_id (FK → fault), magnitude, rate

Relationships:

erDiagram
    parent_fault ||--o{ fault : "grouped into"
    fault ||--o{ fault_plane : "made up of"
    fault ||--o{ magnitude_frequency_distribution : "has"
    fault ||--o{ rupture_faults : "appears in"
    rupture ||--o{ rupture_faults : "involves"

    parent_fault {
        int parent_id PK
        text name
    }
    fault {
        int fault_id PK
        int parent_id FK
        int fault_system
        int nshm_id
        real rake
        int tect_type
    }
    fault_plane {
        int plane_id PK
        int fault_id FK
        real top_left_lat
        real top_left_lon
        real top_right_lat
        real top_right_lon
        real bottom_right_lat
        real bottom_right_lon
        real bottom_left_lat
        real bottom_left_lon
        real top_depth
        real bottom_depth
    }
    rupture {
        int rupture_id PK
        int fault_system
        int nshm_id
        real magnitude
        real area
        real len
        real rate
    }
    rupture_faults {
        int rupture_fault_id PK
        int rupture_id FK
        int fault_id FK
    }
    magnitude_frequency_distribution {
        int entry_id PK
        int fault_id FK
        real magnitude
        real rate
    }

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• parent_fault → fault is one-to-many: a named fault is made of one or more fault sections.
• fault → fault_plane is one-to-many: a fault section's surface is triangulated/paneled into one or more rectangular planes.
• fault ↔ rupture is many-to-many, resolved through rupture_faults: a rupture involves multiple faults, and a fault can be part of multiple ruptures.
• fault → magnitude_frequency_distribution is one-to-many: each fault has its own MFD used (via NSHMDB.most_likely_fault) to estimate which of its constituent faults a rupture most likely nucleated on.

fault_system, nshm_id, and (for ruptures/faults) their pairing under UNIQUE(fault_system, nshm_id) tie every row back to the original NSHM identifiers, so the database can be cross-referenced against the source NSHM solution.

Obtain the database

You likely don't need to obtain your own database, as they are published on Dropbox at /QuakeCoRE/Public/NSHM with every version release. Simply download that file and use it with the package:

from nshmdb.nshmdb import NSHMDB

db = NSHMDB('nshmdb_v2026.06.1.db') # or whatever the latest version is.

Generate your own database

After installing this package you simply run

nshmdb 1.0.4 nshmdb.db --api-key API_KEY_HERE