Earthquakes pose a profound danger to people and cities worldwide, but with the right hazard-mitigation efforts, from stricter building requirements to careful zoning, the potential for catastrophic collapses of roads and buildings and loss of human lives can be limited.
All of these measures depend on science delivering high-quality seismic hazard models. And yet, current models depend on a list of uncertain assumptions, with predictions that are difficult to test in the real world due to the long intervals between big earthquakes.
Now, a team of researchers from
"Whether a big earthquake happens next week or 10 years from now, engineers need to build for the long run," says the study's lead author,
Simulating nearly 500,000 years of
The earthquake simulator used in the study, RSQSim, simplifies
Seismologists can now use RSQSim to test the statistical model's region-specific predictions. Accurate hazard estimates are especially important to government regulators in high-risk cities like
"If you can get similar results with different techniques, that builds confidence you're doing something right," says study coauthor
A hallmark of the simulator is its use of rate and state-dependent friction to approximate how real-world faults break and transfer stress to other faults, sometimes setting off even bigger quakes. Developed at UC Riverside more than a decade ago, and refined further in the current study, RSQSim is the first physics-based model to replicate
The researchers plan to use the model to learn more about aftershocks, and how they unfold on
"As we improve the physics in our simulations and computers become more powerful, we will better understand where and when the really destructive earthquakes are likely to strike," says study coauthor
The study was funded by the
Study: A physics-based earthquake simulator replicates seismic hazard statistics across
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