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

这项提议是将印度的研究人员纳入现有的国际伙伴关系，该伙伴关系将阿尔卑斯-喜马拉雅地区和中亚地区遭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早先(和目前)的NERC-IOF赠款和当前的NERC-ESRC联合体赠款建立的，由NERC资助的COMET+*联合体的调查人员领导，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发生的一系列高影响地震，这些地震强调了当今富裕国家和发展中国家地震的影响之间存在的鲜明对比。就人的生命而言，风险绝大多数集中在发展中世界，而且主要集中在大陆内陆，阿尔卑斯山-喜马拉雅地区和中亚受到的威胁尤其严重。众所周知，由于过去的地震，该地区的许多社区和城市都很脆弱，但它们现在有相当大的受影响人口。减少这一脆弱性的第一步也是至关重要的一步是提高有关危险的知识水平和特征；远低于加州或日本的水平。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业知识将大大有助于这一任务，即使在当地科学基础已经雄厚的国家也是如此。尤其是，两种地质效应导致了亚洲大陆的特殊脆弱性：(1)大陆内部的地震通常发生在鲜为人知、活动相对较少的广泛分布的断层上。相比之下，那些位于毗邻海洋的板块边界上的断层(如日本、智利)发生在更局部化、更为人所知、活动更频繁的断层上。(2)大陆内陆的许多人类住区集中(然后增长)在发震断层附近的位置，这些断层控制着地形、供水或贸易路线。因此，提高对地震危险的知识和理解不可避免地与大陆构造如何工作的第一级科学问题有关：这是国际科学中最高水平的前沿优先事项，也需要科学界现有的全面观测、理论和技术能力。因此，解决阿尔卑斯山-喜马拉雅地区和中亚地区地震灾害和地震科学所涉及的问题最好由国际科学家伙伴关系来解决，这有助于带来适当的专业知识组合，技术、人力和培训要在每个地区或国家承受。这就是我们旨在通过促进印度科学家的参与来加强伙伴关系的要点。伙伴关系通过会议、研讨会和培训活动发挥作用，包括暑期学校和英国与参与国之间的交流，主要是年轻科学家的访问。最初的IOF提案中的主要项目伙伴是意大利、哈萨克斯坦和中国，他们也对费用做出了很大贡献。支持成员国包括希腊、土耳其、伊朗、土库曼斯坦、乌兹别克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦。人们一直希望以后会有其他国家加入，这里提议的印度的加入将增加整个阿尔卑斯山-喜马拉雅-亚洲地区最脆弱的国家之一。其目的是，该伙伴关系的好处和职能将在IOF奖励的期限之后继续存在。*Comet+是国家地球观测中心国家地球观测中心(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)