Enhancement to: "Earthquakes Without Frontiers: a partnership for increasing resilience to seismic hazard in the continents"

这项建议是将印度的研究人员纳入现有的国际伙伴关系，该伙伴关系将来自阿尔卑斯-喜马拉雅地区和中亚受破坏性和潜在灾难性地震影响的国家的科学家聚集在一起。这一伙伴关系是通过先前（和当前）的NERC-IOF赠款和当前的NERC-ESRC财团赠款建立的，由NERC-COMET +* 财团的研究人员领导，将通过印度的参与得到加强和扩大。该伙伴关系的成立是为了应对过去十年来一系列影响巨大的地震，这些地震突出表明，今天富国和发展中国家的地震影响之间存在着鲜明的对比。就人的生命而言，风险绝大多数集中在发展中世界，主要是在大陆内部，阿尔卑斯-喜马拉雅地区和中亚受到的威胁尤其严重。众所周知，该地区的许多社区和城市由于过去的地震而变得脆弱，但它们现在有相当大的暴露人口。减少这种脆弱性的第一个基本步骤是提高对有关危险的了解和定性水平;这远远低于例如加州或日本。这项任务需要有关国家的科学家参与，但国际科学界现有的专门知识，即使是在当地科学基础已经很强的国家，也会对这项任务大有帮助，特别是两种地质影响造成亚洲大陆的特别脆弱性：（1）大陆内部的地震通常发生在广泛分布的断层上，这些断层知之甚少，运动相对不频繁。相比之下，那些位于靠近海洋的板块边界（如日本、智利）上的断层更局部化、更为人所知，而且移动更频繁。(2)大陆内部的许多人类住区集中在因此，提高对地震危害的认识和理解不可避免地与大陆构造如何运作的首要科学问题联系在一起：这是国际科学最高级别的尖端优先事项，也需要全方位的观测，研究了阿尔卑斯山地区地震灾害和地震科学所涉及的问题，因此，喜马拉雅地区和中亚最好由国际科学家伙伴关系来处理，这可以帮助把专门知识、技术、人力和培训适当地结合起来，在每个地区或国家发挥作用。这就是我们在此通过促进印度科学家的参与来加强伙伴关系的目的，伙伴关系通过会议、讲习班和培训活动发挥作用，包括暑期学校和主要是联合王国与参与国之间的青年科学家的互访。最初IOF提案中的主要项目合作伙伴是意大利、哈萨克斯坦和中国，他们也对费用做出了很大贡献。支持成员包括希腊、土耳其、伊朗、土库曼斯坦、乌兹别克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦。我们一直打算让其他国家稍后加入，而在此提议的印度加入将使整个阿尔卑斯-喜马拉雅-亚洲地区增加一个最脆弱的国家。这样做的目的是，该伙伴关系的利益和运作将在国际法语国家组织授标后继续下去。COMET+是NERC国家地球观测中心（NCEO）的动态地球和地质灾害小组：见（http：comet.nerc.ac.uk）

This proposal is to integrate researchers from India into an existing International Partnership that brings together scientists from countries affected by damaging and potentially catastrophic earthquakes in the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia. This Partnership, established through an earlier (and current) NERC-IOF grant and a current NERC-ESRC consortium grant and led by investigators in the NERC-funded COMET+* consortium, will be enhanced and expanded through the participation of India. The Partnership was formed as a response to a series of high-impact earthquakes over the last decade, which emphasized the stark contrast existing today between the effects of earthquakes in rich and developing nations. In terms of human life, the risk is overwhelmingly concentrated in the developing world, and predominantly in continental interiors, with the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia being particularly threatened. Many communities and cities in this region are known to be vulnerable because of past earthquakes, but they now have considerably larger exposed populations. A first and essential step in reducing that vulnerability is to improve the level of knowledge and characterization of the hazard concerned; which is far below, for example, California or Japan. That task requires the engagement of scientists in the countries concerned, but would be greatly aided by the expertise available in the international scientific community, even in countries where the local scientific base is already strong.In particular, two geological effects contribute to continental Asia's special vulnerability: (1) Earthquakes in continental interiors typically occur on widely-distributed faults that are poorly known and move relatively infrequently. By comparison, those on plate boundaries adjacent to oceans (such as Japan, Chile) occur on faults that are more localized, better known and move more often. (2) Many human settlements in continental interiors concentrate (and then grow) in locations close to earthquake-generating faults, which control topography, water supply or trade routes.Improving knowledge and understanding of the earthquake hazard is therefore inescapably linked to the first-order scientific question of how continental tectonics works: a cutting-edge priority at the highest level in international science, which also requires the full range of observational, theoretical and technical capabilities now available to the scientific community.The issues involved in addressing earthquake hazard and earthquake science in the Alpine-Himalayan region and central Asia are therefore best tackled by international partnerships of scientists, which can help bring an appropriate mixture of expertise, technology, man-power and training to bear in each area or country. That is the point of the Partnership we aim to enhance here by facilitating the participation of scientists from India.The Partnership functions through meetings, workshops and training activities, including a summer school and exchange visits, principally of young scientists between the UK and participating countries. The principal Project Partners in the original IOF proposal, who also contribute substantially to the costs, are Italy, Kazakhstan and China. Supporting members include Greece, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It was always the intention that others would join later, and the addition of India proposed here will add one of the most vulnerable countries in the entire Alpine-Himalayan-Asia region. The intention is that the benefits and functioning of the Partnership will continue well beyond the duration of the IOF award.*COMET+ is the Dynamic Earth and Geohazards Group of NERC's National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO): see (http://comet.nerc.ac.uk)