Wenchuan Earthquake Surface Fault Rupture and Disaster: A Lesson on Seismic Hazard Assessment and Mitigation

Autor: Yi Du, Furen Xie, Zhenming Wang
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Geophysics, Vol 2012 (2012)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1687-885X
1687-8868
DOI: 10.1155/2012/974763
Popis: The Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake occurred along the Longmenshan Faults in China and was a great disaster. Most of the damage and casualties during the quake were concentrated along surface rupture zones: the 240-km-long Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault and the 70-km-long Jiangyou-Guanxian Fault. Although the Longmenshan Faults are well known and studied, the surface Fault ruptures were not considered in mitigation planning, and the associated ground-motion hazard was therefore underestimated. Not considering Fault rupture and underestimating ground-motion hazard contributed to the disastrous effects of the earthquake. The lesson from the Wenchuan earthquake disaster is that the fault rupture hazard must be assessed and considered in mitigation. Furthermore, the deterministic approach is more appropriate for fault rupture hazard assessment than the probabilistic approach.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals