LA-GRID

LOS ANGELES GEOSPATIAL RISK & INFRASTRUCTURE DASHBOARD · LILIANE ML BURKHARD, 2025

LA-GRID is an interactive, browser-based geospatial risk dashboard for the greater Los Angeles region (Santa Barbara to Oceanside). It displays active fault lines, live earthquake data, active wildfire incidents and critical infrastructure.

Features

455 fault traces from the SCEC Community Fault Model (CFM) v6.1 — surface traces (solid) and blind fault projections (dashed). Hover any fault line to see its name.
Live earthquake feed — M2.0+ earthquakes for the last 30 days via the USGS real-time API, color-coded and sized by magnitude. M3.0+ events pulse with an animated ring.
Live wildfire feed — active California wildfire incidents from the CAL FIRE Incident API, shown as animated flame icons 🔥
Critical infrastructure layers — aqueducts, dams, power substations, ports & airports, and major hospitals.
Auto-refresh — earthquake and wildfire data refreshes every 5 minutes.
Zero dependencies — single self-contained HTML file, no server or build step required.

Data Sources

Layer	Source
Fault Lines	SCEC Community Fault Model v6.1 — scec.org
Earthquakes	USGS Earthquake Hazards Program — earthquake.usgs.gov
Wildfires	CAL FIRE Incident API — fire.ca.gov
Aqueducts	LADWP / Metropolitan Water District
Dams	National Inventory of Dams / CA DWR
Power Substations	LADWP / SCE public infrastructure maps
Ports & Airports	Port Authority / FAA public records
Hospitals	California OSHPD public data
Basemap	CartoDB Dark Matter — ©OpenStreetMap contributors, ©CARTO

Fault Line Data

Fault traces are from the SCEC CFM 6.1 Preferred Model — 443 fault objects representing active faults in southern California, built from mapped surface traces, seismicity, seismic reflection profiles and geologic cross-sections.

Reference: Plesch et al. (2007), Community Fault Model (CFM) for Southern California, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 97(6):1793–1802.

Wildfire Data

Live feed from CAL FIRE covering all state, federal and county-managed incidents. Data fetched via corsproxy.io to resolve browser cross-origin restrictions. Coverage includes incidents of 10+ acres; very small or unreported fires may not appear.

Coverage

Parameter	Value
Region	Greater Los Angeles — Santa Barbara to Oceanside
Latitude	33.2°N – 34.9°N
Longitude	120.6°W – 116.4°W
Earthquake min magnitude	M 2.0
Earthquake time window	30 days

Tech Stack

Library	Purpose
Leaflet.js 1.9.4	Interactive mapping library
CartoDB Dark Matter	Basemap tiles
corsproxy.io	CORS proxy for CAL FIRE API access
Vanilla JavaScript	No frameworks — single HTML file, no build step

Attribution & License

©Liliane ML Burkhard, 2025

Author: Liliane ML Burkhard, University of Bern/Hawaii Institute of Geophysics & Planetology https://www.lmlburkhard.com/

All data sources are publicly available under their respective open data licenses.
SCEC CFM: freely available for research and educational use — cite Plesch et al. (2007)
USGS earthquake data: public domain (US government)
CAL FIRE wildfire data: public domain (California state government)
Infrastructure data: compiled from public agency records
CartoDB basemap: ©OpenStreetMap contributors, ©CARTO