Photo of an active fault, with the city of L’Aquila in the background valley
The Quake4D project is funded by UK Research and Innovation as part of their Future Leaders Fellowship funding which has been awarded to Dr Zoë Mildon.
Quake4D is a four year project worth £1.1 million, that will unite geology, physics and computer modelling to develop new approaches to understanding and calculating earthquake hazard.
The project will be focused on studying earthquakes that occur in central and southern Italy, one of the most tectonically active areas in Europe. Dr Mildon has lots of experience working in this area studying the exposed active faults and modelling earthquake interactions. It will also examine submarine inactive fault systems, using seismic reflection to look at the shape of these buried inactive faults and study how the shape and connectivity of faults has changed with time.
Alongside studying the geology, the project will also develop a new physics-based model that can simulate earthquake cycle, from the processes that occur in the few seconds during an earthquake, to the resulting accumulation of stress between earthquakes. This is important to create a rounded picture of the underlying earthquake physics.
By combining geological datasets and the computer modelling, synthetic earthquakes will be generated that are geologically and physically realistic. These synthetic earthquakes will be used to study the natural variability and complexity of earthquakes and explore how these factors can be accounted for in earthquake hazard studies.
