Seismological and Engineering Seismological Basic Research

For the continuous improvement of our seismic hazard analyses, comprehensive basic research is performed focused on seismological and engineering seismological topics. These studies, on one side, provide improvements to the input data such as earthquake catalogues, but also serve the improvement of various models describing the damage potential of earthquakes.

The basis of all seismic hazard analyses for a given region is a complete, homogeneous earthquake catalogue covering the region and its border areas for a long time period. In most cases, the available catalogues only fulfil these requirements partly. Therefore a focus of our section is the re-evaluation of existing catalogues as well as generation of new, mainly regional, cross-national homogenized catalogues.
The effect of an earthquake at a given locality is strongly dependent on the distance to the earthquake source and the damping of seismic waves when travelling through the earth. The establishment of region specific attenuation relations and relations between intensity and physical ground shaking parameters are focuses of our work within the project SAFER.

The direct reason for earthquakes and the generation of seismic waves, is the accumulation of seismic stresses in the brittle part of the crust, mainly due to plate tectonics. Knowledge of the recent stress field therefore provides important clues about the seismic hazard in a region. Our work on this topic is focused on the crustal stress field in Europe.

In addition to the investigations of the stress field, we perform numerical modelling as well as neotectonic investigations to provide supplementary information about earthquake potential of specific geological faults.