Fault2SHA Working Group: Linking Faults to Seismic Hazard Assessment

Date: 4/25/2019

Time: 08:45 AM

Room: Pike

The objective of the Fault to Seismic Hazard Assessment (Fault2SHA) Working Group is to build a community of active fault-related researchers to exchange data, tools and ideas on how to best model faults in seismic hazard assessment in specific tectonic contexts. Use of fault-related information in the assessment of seismic hazard is slowly finding its way in Europe. Progress is slow because the data collection process is time-consuming, the quality of data used to represent faults in databases is heterogeneous and methodologies to incorporate fault information in hazard studies are not necessarily agreed upon across Europe. Indeed, complex ruptures observed in the last years (e.g. the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikōura, NZ earthquake that ruptured 21 different faults over 180 kilometers, but also the three main Mw 6.0-6.5 events in Central Apennines, Italy in 2016 that partially re-ruptured the same patches) confirm the need to relax the “segmentation” concept, raising numerous questions in the seismic hazard community, in terms of its capacity to anticipate such events. Since its formalization inside the European Seismological Commission (ESC General Assembly in 2016), the WG promoted several interdisciplinary sessions at international conferences, a “residential” workshop for about fifty participants in Barcelonette (F) in May 2017, editorial initiatives, and micro-training courses (https://fault2sha.net/). In 2018, two natural laboratories were established (one in the central Apennines and a second one in south-eastern Spain) to face the challenges of transdisciplinary discussions among geophysicists, earthquake geologists, geodesists and seismologists. The WG contributed to another international initiative, sponsored by the Saudi Arabia KAUST University (https://eqhazard.kaust.edu.sa/), aimed to integrate geological and seismological observations into physics-based rupture simulations.

In this meeting, we aim at widening the discussion beyond the European context and to open to new potential Fault2SHA members the opportunity to join the next activities.

Presenting Author: Laura Peruzza

Authors