image: Researcher Marisol Monterrubio explaining an earthquake simulation.
Credit: CASE / BSC - CNS
Barcelona, 17 September 2025 - MareNostrum 5 will be the first European supercomputer to simulate the impact of major disasters such as earthquakes under real conditions. To this end, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) will test for the first time in Europe an urgent computing protocol to improve the immediate response to extreme natural events and mitigate their effects. The test will be carried out as part of Mexico's National Earthquake Drill on 19 September.
Using real seismic alert data, such as the hypocentre and magnitude, obtained thanks to the collaboration between BSC and the National Seismological Service of Mexico (SSN), researchers will generate maps showing the intensity and extent of the earthquake. This will be the first time that physics-based simulations have been used to produce high-resolution maps in the minutes following an earthquake, which will help to identify regions with a higher probability of infrastructure damage and reduce the response time of rescue and civil protection teams.
‘This test will allow us to test the urgent computing flows for earthquakes that we have developed at BSC in real conditions, and their potential use for operational delivery in the future. The results can be valuable in helping with the first response actions to disasters with a high potential impact on society,’ explains Marisol Monterrubio Velasco, a Mexican researcher at BSC and scientific lead for the test.
The simulation, organised by the Mexican Government together with the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the SSN, will this year recreate a hypothetical scenario with the same characteristics as the devastating earthquake of 1985, which left more than 10,000 dead, tens of thousands injured and more than 250,000 homeless: an 8.1 magnitude earthquake with its epicentre on the Pacific coast, in the south of the state of Michoacán, one of the most seismically active areas in the world.
In this commemorative drill, Mexico will also test its national mobile phone alert system for the first time, sending a message simultaneously to more than 80 million phones, in addition to the alarms that will sound throughout the country to instruct the population to evacuate their homes, schools and workplaces and head to previously designated safe areas.
Pioneering protocol in the European supercomputing ecosystem
The exercise, carried out under real conditions and in direct collaboration with the SSN and the company Mondaic, represents a pioneering step in the European supercomputing ecosystem: ‘This is the first urgent supercomputing protocol for emergencies in Europe, as until now there had only been isolated cases, such as the simulation of the La Palma eruption, which was also carried out at BSC in 2021, but without an established operational framework,’ added Josep de la Puente, leader of the BSC’s Wave Phenomena Group.
The multidisciplinary team of researchers participating in the exercise is made up of physicists, engineers, computer scientists, seismologists and geophysicists from the BSC's Computational Applications for Science and Engineering (CASE) and Computer Science departments.
For the test, scientists will have urgent and priority access to 55 GPU nodes of MareNostrum 5, which will allow them to generate a simulation grid of 700 km x 400 km x 150 km deep with a resolution of 2 km, an unprecedented dimension covering approximately half of Mexico's territory. This exceptional allocation of computational resources simulates an urgent computing request in an emergency context, a pioneering event in Europe that tests the capacity of a supercomputing centre to respond immediately to a natural extreme event.
‘Urgent computing is based on the concept of urgency: analysing possible cases, establishing priority levels and defining action protocols. In highly critical situations, such as an imminent risk to human lives, the system can automatically stop the execution of ongoing processes to make way for urgent tasks, without delay or operator intervention. Urgent tasks—programmes, data, and procedures—have been prepared, verified, and approved in advance to ensure an immediate response," explains Sergi Girona, Director of Operations and CIO at the BSC.
Computational simulation to strengthen society's resilience to extreme events
This urgent and semi-automatic computing capacity represents a paradigm shift in access to supercomputing, aimed at providing immediate service in situations where real-time simulation can aid decision-making in the event of a potential disaster. Once operational, these types of protocols can help mitigate risks and increase resilience to natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and floods, helping to save lives and reduce the economic impact of disasters.
BSC has vast experience in national and European projects related to extreme natural events, such as ChEESE, eFlows4HPC and DT-GEO, in which it has developed key tools for seismic simulation and urgent computing workflows that will now be put to the test in this simulation.
In addition, BSC collaborates with the Military Emergency Unit (UME) in the use of supercomputing and artificial intelligence to simulate risk scenarios in Spain and support decision-making, working together to create a digital twin for emergencies that includes earthquake simulation and the development of support systems. BSC is also an essential part of Destination Earth, one of the European Commission's major initiatives to combat climate change, which aims to create digital twins of the planet to anticipate extreme natural phenomena.
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable