The Indonesian earthquakes of 2004 December 26 (Sumatra, 9.0MW, tsunamigenic, ground shaking damage, upwards of 280,000 casualties), 2006 May 26 (Yogyakarta, Java, 6.6MW, ground shaking damage, several thousand casualties), 2006 July 17 (South of Java, 7.7MW, tsunamigenic, several hundred casualties), recently 2009 September, and elsewhere in the world 2005 October 8 Kashmir (7.7MW), 2008 May 12 Sichuan China (7.9MW)  and recently 2011 March 11 Japan (9.0MW) underline the need for seismic hazard understanding brought together by simultaneous analysis of seismicity and earthquake faulting. Earthquake hazard interacting with the human environment creates risk for populations, ordinary buildings and sophisticated engineering structures alike (e.g. nuclear power plants).

There is much at present that is neither fully understood nor quantifiable about relationships between dispersed seismicity and specific fault systems, about maximum credible earthquakes and division of major through-going faults into smaller fault segments still capable of large earthquake and damaging ground shaking. We have carried out seismic hazard research using extreme value approaches leading on to seismic risk i.e. likelihood of building damage and potential mortalities (in Shanghai, Cole et al., 2008) and there are many ways to model spatiotemporal seismicity variations (e.g. see Burton et al., 2006) – in this project we shall deploy newly developed techniques to partition seismicity into clusters (seismological use of k-means analysis was extensively developed in Weatherill & Burton, 2009) and faults into segments. We shall develop the modelling into analysis of probabilistic strong ground shaking (Burton et al., 2008; Weatherill & Burton, 2010). The project title is an umbrella for possible variants: target seismicity may be 1) the Himalayan thrust zone or thrust zones in China, or 2) strike-slip zones in California, New Zealand or Turkey (North Anatolian fault) although our most likely targets will be in 3) Indonesia (e.g. Sumatran fault). The need for overseas fieldwork may arise in Sumatra or Java. There will be a need for international research collaboration with overseas colleagues (even if we extend project scope to 4) low seismicity studies in Western Europe including UK).

The student will investigate how to segment a variety of fault systems and active areas by partitioning seismicity into earthquake clusters.

S/he will address questions of: How do earthquake clusters relate to geology? How does cluster resolution vary with seismotectonic regime? How may cluster analysis be extended to analysis of seismic hazard and estimation of maximum earthquakes?

The student's training will be in high-powered computer use and programming, Monte Carlo methods, management of large datasets and s/he should develop a first rate understanding of analytical seismotectonics. The student will have the opportunity to assist by demonstrating in undergraduate classes.

The successful applicant will have a good foundation in some combination of physics, geophysics, mathematics, statistics, geology, environmental science

Burton, P.W., Hainzl, S. & Lasocki, S., (eds), 2006. Spatiotemporal Models of Seismicity and Earthquake Occurrence, Special Issue Tectonophysics, 423, 148 pages.

Burton, P.W., Weatherill, G., Karnawati, D. & Pramumijoyo, S., 2008. Seismic Hazard Assessment and Zoning in Java: New and Alternative Probabilistic Assessment Models, in Earthquake Disaster Risk Reduction: Engineering Challenges After Recent Disasters,  eds. I. Imran,  A. Surahman, M. Moestopo, and W. Sengara, CD Proc. Int. Conf. Earthquake Eng. and Disaster Mitigation, pp. 284-291, Jakarta, 14-15 April 2008 [available on request].

Cole, S.W., Xu, Y. & Burton, P.W., 2008. Seismic hazard and risk in Shanghai and estimation of expected building damage, Soil Dynamics & Earthquake Eng., 28, 778-794, doi: 10.1016/j.soildyn.2007.10.008.

Weatherill, G. & Burton, P.W., 2009. Delineation of shallow seismic source zones using K-means cluster analysis, with application to the Aegean region, Geophys. J. Int., 176, 565-588, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2008.03997.x.

Weatherill, G. & Burton, P.W., 2010. An alternative approach to probabilistic seismic hazard analysis in the Aegean region using Monte Carlo simulation, Tectonophysics, 492, 253-278, doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2010.06.022.