Our thoughts go out to the Moroccan populations affected by the powerful earthquake of September 8, 2023. Fault2sha, a European Seismological Commision working group, with numerous members working in a variety of fields related to seismic hazard assessment would like to reach out to our Maroccan colleagues to offer any help, remote or in the field, that may help understand the tectonic context of this earthquake and to improve our collective knowledge in this region, a key issues for the challenges facing the reconstruction ahead.
In the framework of the italian PRIN2020 Project “Fault segmentation and seismotectonics of active thrust systems: the Northern Apennines and Southern Alps laboratories for new Seismic Hazard Assessments in northern Italy” (NASA4SHA), the paleoseismology research group coordinated by Maria Eliana Poli (University of Udine), including geologists and paleoseismologists from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (Emanuela Falcucci, Stefano Gori), University of Udine (Giovanni Paiero, Andrea Marchesini) and University of Ferrara (Giulia Patricelli, Riccardo Caputo), dug a trench across the eastern Southalpine front, investigating the Budoia-Aviano active thrust front.
Thanks to multiscale preliminary investigation, performed with geophysicists of the University of Ferrara (Enzo Rizzo), the paleoseismological study brought to light extraordinary recordings of past coseismic deformation associated to linear morphogenic earthquakes, in an area that since a few years ago was considered affected by minor seismicity. A set of reverse faults has been indeed exposed by the trench.
Now, other trenches will be made parallel to the first one; the challenge is to possibly associate this new paleoseismological evidence of coseismic surface displacement to historical seismic events of the region, thus contributing to more reliable estimates of the seismogenic and capability potential of the active faults of NE-Italy. In line with this, we are evaluating the possibility to make the site accessible for scientific and public awareness purposes.
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will organize a webinar on May 30, dealing with recent advances in probabilistic fault displacement hazard assessment for nuclear installations in light of geological reconnaissance findings.
The webinar will provide an overview of the contribution of collected field evidence for principal and distributed ruptures; present the geological reconnaissance survey findings for the 6 February 2023, Turkiye earthquake sequence; provide information on IAEA activities regarding PFDHA including results of a benchmarking study.
We are pleased to announce a kick-off meeting of the Thematic Lab on Fault Displacement Hazard, to be held on Wed. 14th June 2023; 17:00 – 18:30 CET (15-16:30 UTC; 12-13:30 ART; 8-9:30 PST)
This first meeting will:
Introduce the aims of the Lab;
Give the opportunity to all the participants to introduce themselves, share thoughts and expectations, share ideas of potential common interest – if you have an idea that needs to be explained with a figure, feel free to prepare one slide;
Planning future actions: all the ideas from the community are welcome! For the moment, we think short talk series can be a good way to start interactions for possible collaborations, e.g., 2 talks per meeting on stimulating topics, with large space for discussion. We are planning to have the first of the talk series in September 2023.
If you have a topic, or results from your research or experiences that can help the discussion and interactions, please propose your talk at the meeting.
If you know a colleague working on topics of potential interest for FDH, who does not know about the Lab, please invite her/him to join the Lab, or simply invite her/him to have a talk during a future meeting.
Please, confirm your attendance to the kick-off meeting by sending an e-mail to Francesca (francesca.ferrario@uninsubria.it), so we will share with you the link to attend the meeting.
The deadline to submit your application for MSCA-DN TREAD project PhD positions has been postponed. The new deadline is 30th of April. The topics range from fault mechanics and structural geology, to machine learning seismicity monitoring and modelling, to dynamic rupture modelling, seismic hazard and risk estimation, and much more. Visit https://tread-horizon.eu and submit your application. A new generation of earthquake researchers is waiting for you!
In the wake of the devasting 6th of February 2023 earthquake that hit a very wide region along the Turkey/Syria border, the members of the European Seismological Commission Fault2sha Working group wish to express their support to the families of the victims and all those doing their utmost today to continue to rescue and help the affected population. In silence, in the backstage, we continue our activities to improve knowledge and create synergies in the hope that tomorrow we shall never again witness similar catastrophes.
To appreciate some of our actions, we encourage you to visit the two new thematic labs created following the 6th Fault2SHA Workshop in Chieti:
Fault2SHA Post-earthquake Reconnaissance Lab; many new Fault2sha members have joined this laboratory, motivated by the occurrence of the recent earthquake in Turkey. Each one ready to help in presence or remotely.
We also encourage you to visit our JOB OFFERS announcing the call for 11 PhD positions, in the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network of the Project TREAD. The selection will be carried out in various European institutions. We hope young people from the devastated areas can participate to the selection too, to build together a new generation of Fault2SHA scientists.
We are ready for the 6th Workshop of the Fault2SHA ESC Working Group. It will be held in Chieti on January 19-20, 2023. It is the first in-person meeting after years; it follows the kickoff meeting of the new Horizon Europe MSCA-DN project TREAD, leaded by the University of Chieti-Pescara. TREAD will open 11 phD positions in Europe soon.
About 45 experienced and early career researchers are expected; key-note lectures will be recorded for the community. Enjoy the PRE-WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS, and the mountains’ view!
A new Horizon Europe MSCA-DN project has been funded by the European Commision.
Project Title: TREAD, data and pRocesses in sEismic hAzarD
Project Coordinator: Bruno Pace (Università Chieti-Pescara, Italy)
The aim of TREAD is to train a new generation of researchers to tackle the challenges of earthquake forecasting in complex tectonic settings using integrated observations and physics.
The TREAD objectives are:
(i) to develop a novel integrative approach to seismic hazard analysis in Europe and the Mediterranean from small-scale laboratory experiments to large-scale observations.
(ii) to establish physics-based earthquake modelling bridging time scales from millions of years to fractions of a second in complex tectonic settings.
(iii) to improve the link between earthquake geology, computational modelling and hazard and risk assessment with a focus on the needs of governments, industry and scientific stakeholders.
To reach these objectives the TREAD consortium comprises 14 academic and 8 non-academic institutions, of which 8 private partners, of high scientific level, from 7 European countries, covering cutting-edge knowledge and expertise in observational, experimental and modelling fields:
Università degli Studi di Chieti-Pescara (Ud’A), Italy
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
Universiteit Utrecht (UU), Netherlands
Fondazione GEM (GEM), Italy
Université Grenoble-Alpes (UGA), France
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), Germany
Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Spain
Università degli Studi di Padova (UNIPD), Italy
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Switzerland
Institut de Sureté Nucléaire et de Radioprotection (IRSN), France
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Italy
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Italy
Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), Germany
Institut de Physique du Globe (IPGP), France
Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HZDR), Germany
Willis Tower Watson (Willis), United Kingdom
IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN), France
Eléctricité de France (EDF), France
Università degli studi di Milano Bicocca (UNIMIB), Italy
Munich REb (MUNCHRE), Germany
TNO (TNO), Netherlands
TRE-Altamira (TRE), Italy
Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), France
11 PhD positions will be available soon: HERE the details.
