Benefits

This proposal is innovative from the scientific, technical and economical point of view:

First, it will stimulate the search for large (pre)historical earthquakes in regions of Europe where the seismic hazard is erroneously considered as low because the present level of the seismic activity is low. From the scientific point of view, the proposed project will provide original and fundamental new observations and information concerning the geodynamics inside the European lithospheric plate and along some of its borders with the African plate. One of the purposes of the project is to furnish scientific evidence that surface rupturing earthquakes could be one of the fundamental aspects of the deformation inside the European plate.

On the other hand, the understanding of the mechanical behaviour of active faults in regions where the deformation rates are low is of fundamental importance for a realistic long-term seismic hazard assessment not only for Europe, but also for every intraplate region in the world.

The proposal introduces original methodologies:

• for the identification and the study of the mechanical behaviour of active faults in areas where the deformation rates are low.
• for recording the stratigraphy inside the trenches.
• in using regional data from natural caves.
• in elaborating a way to quantify the uncertainties and the quality of information provided by paleoseismological experimentation.

 A major economical benefit is obviously to help governments in setting new standards about how and where to build infrastructures that are potentially dangerous for the environment. Therefore, our proposal could contribute to establish new norms more in accordance with the seismic reality of the studied regions as determined by our work.