Objective
With an average toll of 80.000 deaths per year over the last decade, earthquakes remain one of the most dreadful geohazards. The advancement of earthquake risk assessment and forecasting methods (probability estimates that a mainshock may occur in terms of hypocentre location, magnitude and time) calls for a sound physical basis. The nucleation, propagation and arrest of an earthquake rupture results from the interplay of stress perturbations, micro- to macro-scale friction- and rupture-related processes and fault zone geometrical complexity. Most of the information about these parameters is out of reach of seismic waves and geophysical analysis. Here we aim at enhancing our knowledge of earthquake physics (from nucleation to arrest) by means of a multidisciplinary approach that includes:
1) experiments to investigate earthquake nucleation by reproducing crustal (pressure, temperature, presence of fluids, stress perturbations, etc.) deformation conditions with the most powerful earthquake simulator installed worldwide (SHIVA);
2) experiments to investigate rupture propagation on simulated faults using natural rocks and small-scale analogue models;
3) field studies of exhumed seismogenic sources to quantify the geometrical complexity of natural fault zones;
4) advanced numerical simulation techniques that will integrate the above information and allow up-scaling to natural faults. The numerical models will produce physically-based earthquake simulations that will be compared with high-resolution seismic data.
By reproducing crustal deformation conditions (stress, temperature, fluid pressures, etc.) in the laboratory and by monitoring acoustic emissions, gases, electromagnetic waves, etc., produced by the rock samples during deformation, a by-product of our research will be the systematic investigation of precursory phenomena (seismic, chemical, and electromagnetic) associated to earthquake nucleation processes.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyseismology
- social sciencessociologygovernancecrisis managementseismic risk management
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback.
You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Call for proposal
ERC-2013-CoG
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
ERC-CG - ERC Consolidator GrantsHost institution
35122 Padova
Italy