Assessment of strong earthquake risk in the Chinese mainland from 2021 to 2030

Abstract

The long-term earthquake prediction from 2021 to 2030 is carried out by researching the active tectonic block boundary zones in the Chinese mainland. Based on the strong earthquake recurrence model, the cumulative probability of each target fault in the next 10 years is given by the recurrence period and elapsed time of each fault, which are adopted from relevant studies such as seismological geology, geodesy, and historical earthquake records. Based on the long-term predictions of large earthquakes throughout the world, this paper proposes a comprehensive judgment scheme based on the fault segments with the seismic gap, motion strongly locked, sparse small-moderate earthquakes, and apparent Coulomb stress increase. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the relative risk for strong earthquakes that may occur in the coming 10 years on the major faults in the active tectonic block boundary zones in the Chinese mainland. The present loading rate of each fault is first constrained by geodetic observations; the cumulative displacement of each fault is then estimated by the elapsed time since the most recent strong earthquake.