Anne Strader

Supervisors: Dr. Danijel Schorlemmer (GFZ), Prof. Dr. Fabrice Cotton (GFZ)

Project: Are Earthquake Hazard Models Complete?

Locations and magnitudes of recent large (m_w ≥ 6.0) earthquakes have sometimes contradicted seismicity rates expected by earthquake source models that form the basis of Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA). The discrepancies are a consequence of underestimating either the seismicity rate or expected maximum magnitude, both of which are primarily derived from historical and instrumental earthquake catalog data. Furthermore, conflicting seismicity rates inferred from GPS velocity and seismicity data have been observed, suggesting that earthquake‐catalog data may not completely account for seismic moment release. I hypothesize that geodetic and stress data may significantly improve current state‐of‐the‐art earthquake source models used in PSHA.

The impact of recently available, high‐quality stress and geodetic data has not yet been comprehensively investigated in PSHA, and could potentially provide missing information for regions where only insufficient seismicity data exist. I address three main questions: 1) How are seismicity, geodetic, stress and focal‐mechanism data interconnected, and how do they complement each other? 2) How relevant is the inclusion of stress and geodetic data in PSHA?, and 3) How can these data improve hazard models in developing countries with few available seismicity data, but many stress and geodetic data?