TREAD will train the next generation of earth scientists and engineers in the integration of concepts from earthquake geology, the physics of seismic rupture and fault mechanics, and computational earthquake modelling. The hazard models produced with these approaches will be then combined into novel integrated seismic risk analyses, which will undoubtedly have significant social impact and economic applications. TREAD will foster a refocusing of earthquake rupture modelling and fault geological observations into these emergent and important multi-scale problems.
By promoting close collaboration between experimental physicists, geologists and seismic hazard and risk modellers, this Doctoral Network will enrich and empower the existing, but historically separated, communities with the objective of bringing sophisticated numerical and theoretical methods into seismic risks assessments. The practical implementation of seismic hazard within TREAD will be reinforced by the development of a comprehensive framework for treating challenges such as uncertainties in earthquake hazard, low probability- high risk events, risk assessment and policy making. The TREAD triangle of knowledge of research, training and innovation will assure the employability of the 11 Doctoral Candidates (hereinafter DC) in academic, private and decision-making sectors. The interdisciplinary research of the TREAD project, promoted by an interdisciplinary network gathering the best European institutes in the field, will prepare a new generation of researchers able to master for the first-time earthquake geology, seismology, seismic hazard, and risk assessment. Through the training and research program of TREAD, the DC will increase their employability through exposure to two different paths: the academic path and the private sector path. Over the last decades, there have been several multi-disciplinary projects in Europe dealing with seismology and seismic hazard (e.g. SHARE, EPOS, NERA, NEREIS, SERA, EFEHR, QUEST and URBASIS for engineering seismology, ChEESE for Solid Earth, CREEP for geomechanics), some aiming at developing European scale infrastructures (e.g. EPOS or ChEESE large computing system, or observational systems) or database and associated web services (e.g. SHARE-EFEHR earthquake source database, ORFEUS broad band database). TREAD builds on these projects by promoting a more integrated multi-disciplinary approach to seismic hazard.