We report on a unified on-the-fly, Web services-based observation/analysis/modeling environment for crustal deformation and natural hazards research, intended as a plug-in service for early warning systems, transfer of rapid information to civilian decision makers and the media, and educational purposes. We demonstrate an early warning system for a large earthquake in southern California using the components developed under several NASA-funded projects, including real-time GPS network infrastructure, Geophysical Resources Web Services, and GPS Explorer data portal with its on-the-fly earthquake modeling software. We generate an on-the-fly earthquake fault model based on simulated real-time (dynamic and coseismic) displacements computed by the GPS network, and viewable through GPS Explorer. Our objective is to demonstrate an operational service that could be transitioned to appropriate civilian agencies in southern California.

A new dimension of object-oriented components is presented to describe knowledge-level models of an application. From the knowledge-level perspective, components are needed for modeling the problems, solution methods, and their relationships in a problem-solving process. A problem can often be decomposed recursively by various methods into subproblems until reaching primitive ones. Each primitive problem is confined to a simple computational task, which can be solved by one problem-solving method. The process of problem solving is viewed as a modeling activity through explicitly represented knowledge-level models that are, then, operationalized. Design issues that are encountered when developing such a component-based framework for knowledge-level modeling are described.>