The ChEESE Project has released a new short documentary highlighting the urgent computing exercise carried out by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) during Mexico’s National Earthquake Drill. The film provides a behind-the-scenes view of how advanced supercomputing technologies were deployed in real time to simulate a major seismic event and support emergency preparedness.
The documentary shows how the workflow was triggered, how simulations were executed on the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, and how ground-shaking maps, seismic hazard parameters, impact assessments, and technical reports were generated and shared during the drill in close collaboration with Mexican authorities.
The exercise, developed within the framework of the ChEESE Project, was recognised with the 2025 HPC Innovation Excellence Award, announced during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC25). The award acknowledged BSC’s role in producing high-resolution, near real-time simulations of a hypothetical magnitude 8.1 earthquake to support decision-making in emergency scenarios.
The short documentary also highlights the collaborative nature of the trial, carried out with the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Mexican National Seismological Service (SSN), Mondaic, and European partners from the ChEESE-2P and DT-GEO projects, marking a pioneering step for European HPC in large-scale disaster response.
Watch the documentary below or directly on our YouTube channel, with captions in English available:
Credits
- Published
- 5 February 2026
- Production, filming and editing:
- Aerton Guimarães and Varvara Vedia — ChEESE-2P Dissemination Team
