Description du projet
Dévoiler la physique des séismes et des failles
Les séismes de forte intensité peuvent laisser des traces de destruction, causant des morts et des millions d’euros de dégâts matériels. Des efforts considérables ont été déployés pour prévoir le moment où ils pourraient frapper, mais à ce jour, les précurseurs géophysiques — les phénomènes précédant les tremblements de terre — n’ont pas encore été détectés avant un séisme dévastateur. Pour y remédier, le projet FaultScan, financé par l’UE, vise à créer une nouvelle approche de surveillance sismique à haute résolution, basée sur le bruit, afin de sonder le cœur de failles sismiques réelles et de permettre la détection de précurseurs systématiques de séismes. Le projet se concentrera sur la faille de San Jacinto, considérée comme l’un des plus grands risques sismiques en Californie.
Objectif
The recent September 2017, magnitude 7.1 central Mexico earthquake that caused 370 casualties reminds us that earthquakes are among the most dramatic natural disasters worldwide. Causal physical processes are not instantaneous and laboratory and numerical experiments predict that earthquakes should be preceded by a detectable slow preparation phase. Despite considerable efforts, however, robust geophysical precursors have not yet been observed before damaging earthquakes.
My FaultScan project will revolutionize our ability to directly observe transient deformation within the core of active faults and provide unprecedented accuracy in the detection of earthquake precursors. My ambition is to develop a new, noise-based, high resolution, seismic monitoring approach. I intend to grasp the opportunity of a recent step change in seismic instrumentation and data processing capabilities to achieve a dream for seismologists: reproduce repeatable, daily, virtual seismic sources that can probe the core of active faults at seismogenic depths using only passive seismic records.
I plan to target the San Jacinto Fault (a branch of the San Andreas Fault system) that is currently believed to pose one of the largest seismic risks in California. It is an ideal fault for this project because it is very active, already extensively studied and easily accessible for the pilot field data acquisition work.
This project is in collaboration with the Univ. of South. California, the Univ. of Cal. San Diego and specialists in earthquake mechanics and will include earthquake preparation processes and seismic modeling that will guide us for our long-term (3 years), breakthrough, passive seismic experiment and further data analysis and interpretation.
I strongly believe that this project has a very high potential for providing fundamental results on the physics of earthquakes and faults and that it will have a major impact on earthquake prediction worldwide in the near future.
Champ scientifique
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyseismology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographynatural disasters
- social sciencessociologygovernancecrisis managementseismic risk management
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
38058 Grenoble
France