RAPID: Real-Time Investigations of the Tohoku and Darfield Earthquake Sequences

2010年达菲尔德(新西兰)和2011年东北(日本)激发的地震序列是在两个独特且仪器齐全的构造实验室进行的自然实验。这个NSF项目通过与日本和新西兰的同事合作，支持美国科学家参与这些实验。国际项目组正在获得关于地震短期可预报性的新知识，这是物理学中一个尚未解决的重大问题。智力价值：该项目的目标是改善与时间相关的地震预报的物理和统计基础。结合地震、大地测量和其他数据的新预测模型正在开发中，并利用合作实验室研究地震可预报性的现有基础设施进行评估。研究集中在两个领域：(A)基于物理的预测模型的回顾校准和前瞻性测试，包括基于速率/状态相关摩擦、库仑应力函数和慢滑事件观测的预测模型，以及(B)对预测大地震至关重要的假设的评估，包括特征地震假说、地震空区假说和最大震级假说。广泛的影响：该项目资助的基础研究是阐明与原生和次生地震灾害的时间变化相关的关键科学问题。这些结果将有助于加州地震概率工作组制定改进的随时间变化的统一加州地震破裂预测，也将有助于美国地质调查局和国家海洋和大气管理局改进其对卡斯卡迪亚海岸地震和海啸灾害的随时间变化的预测程序。

The earthquake sequences excited by 2010 Darfield (New Zealand) and 2011 Tohoku (Japan) are natural experiments being conducted in two distinctive and well-instrumented tectonic laboratories. This NSF project supports U.S. scientists to participate in these experiments by collaborating with their Japanese and New Zealand colleagues. The international project team is gaining new knowledge about short-term earthquake predictability, which is a major unsolved problem of physical science. Intellectual Merit: The project goal is to improve the physical and statistical foundations for time-dependent earthquake forecasting. New forecasting models incorporating seismic, geodetic, and other data are being developed and evaluated using the existing infrastructure of the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability. The research is focused in two areas: (a) the retrospective calibration and prospective testing of physics-based forecasting models, including those based on rate/state-dependent friction, the Coulomb stress function, and observations of slow slip events, and (b) the evaluation of hypotheses critical to forecasting large earthquakes, including the characteristic earthquake hypothesis, the seismic gap hypothesis, and the maximum-magnitude hypothesis.Broader Impacts: The basic research sponsored by this project is elucidating critical scientific issues related to temporal changes in primary and secondary seismic hazards. The results will help the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities formulate an improved time-dependent Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, and they will also aid the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration improve their procedures for time-dependent forecasting of earthquake and tsunami hazards off the Cascadia coast.