Rapid assessment of the September 5, 2022 ​MS 6.8 Luding earthquake in Sichuan, China

Abstract

At 12:52, September 5, 2022, an M_S 6.8 earthquake occurred in Luding, Sichuan. The earthquake caused serious casualties and property loss, and was determined to have an epicenter intensity of IX degree. In this study, we used three earthquake intensity rapid assessment methods (i.e. WFM, BPM and ASM) to evaluate the intensity of this earthquake. Then, we comparatively analyzed the three methods based on strong ground motion observation data and actual intensity maps. The results show that: (1) The earthquake is associated with a southeast-oriented single-sided rupture. The WFM method can only evaluate earthquakes with two-sided ruptures, which has some limitations; (2) The intensity of BPM and ASM was overestimated on the southwest and north sides of the epicenter, but other high-intensity zones were similar to the intensities measured by actual surveys; (3) The residuals of the three intensity assessment methods were all between −0.5 and 1. Although a small number of stations were underestimated, the overall residuals were good, and the residuals gradually approached 0 with the increase of distance; (4) The number of towns and villages evaluated by the three methods in the earthquake area was almost all lower than the field survey results. One exception is the area of VIII degree, where the BPM and ASM were higher than the survey results; (5) The area of the earthquake area evaluated by the three methods was low in VI and VII degree, moderate in VIII degree, and low in IX degree (the area from ASM is similar to the area measured by actual survey). Overall, ASM is applicable to this earthquake intensity assessment.