关键词: 活动断裂, 地震危险性, 城市

Abstract: Displacements along active faults buried directly beneath major cities create devastating earthquakes that seriously threaten the safety of human lives and properties. Exploration and seismic hazard assessment of active faults in urban areas are thus an important systematic engineering for disaster mitigation in major cities. It is also a new field for active tectonic studies. The kernel of this work includes determining of the exact location of active faults, dating the ages of last tectonic activity, relating the shallow level faults to structures in the crustal depth, assessing seismic hazard and potential for surface offsets, and formulating countermeasures for disaster mitigations. We use the following simple phrases to express these key scientific problems: Where are the faults? Are they active? How deep are they? Will they create earthquake? Will they form surface offsets? What are the countermeasures? This paper explains these key scientific problems in detail.

Key words: active fault, seismic hazard assessment, urban areas