Assessment System of Permanent Displacement of Ground Surface Caused by Seismic Rupture due to Active Faults

Large-scale surface rupture caused by destructive earthquakes causes serious damage to major projects and requires the estimation of the permanent displacement of the ground surface caused by seismic rupture to take effective measures to reduce the effect of disasters. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a system for assessing the permanent displacement of the ground surface due to seismic rupture, which will be applicable to earthquake engineering. The system takes the physical process of earthquake occurrence as the theoretical basis, comprehensively analyzes the seismic activity, seismic geologic environment, fault activity characteristics, tectonic stress field, and GPS observation data, and evaluates the strong earthquake-prone sections of active faults through motion dynamics simulation. Then, referring to the statistical relationships between historical earthquakes, modern earthquakes, and ancient earthquakes, a model of earthquake occurrence is determined. We combine it with the results of seismic hazard analysis and select different methods of evaluating permanent surface displacements caused by seismic rupture at near-fault sites and far-from-fault sites through suitability analysis. We apply the proposed assessment system for example validation and find that the characteristics of the obtained permanent displacement field of the ground surface caused by seismic rupture are basically consistent with actual engineering laws.