A Worldwide and Unified Database of Surface Ruptures (SURE) for Fault Displacement Hazard Analyses

Fault displacement hazard assessment is based on empirical relationships
that are established using historic earthquake fault ruptures.
These relationships evaluate the likelihood of coseismic
surface slip considering on-fault and off-fault ruptures, for given
earthquake magnitude and distance to fault. Moreover, they
allow predicting the amount of fault slip at and close to the
active fault of concern. Applications of this approach include
land use planning, structural design of infrastructure, and critical
facilities located on or close to an active fault.
To date, the current equations are based on sparsely populated
datasets, including a limited number of pre-2000 events. In
2015, an international effort started to constitute a worldwide
and unified fault displacement database (SUrface Ruptures due
to Earthquakes [SURE]) to improve further hazard estimations.
After two workshops, it was decided to unify the existing
datasets (field-based slip measurements) to incorporate recent
and future cases, and to include new parameters relevant to
properly describe the rupture.
This contribution presents the status of the SURE database
and delineates some perspectives to improve the surface-faulting
assessment. Original data have been compiled and adapted
to the structure. The database encompasses 45 earthquakes
from magnitude 5–7.9, with more than 15,000 coseismic surface
deformation observations (including slip measurements)
and 56,000 of rupture segments. Twenty earthquake cases are
from Japan, 15 from United States, two from Mexico, Italy,
and New Zealand, one from Kyrgystan, Ecuador, Turkey,
and Argentina. Twenty-four earthquakes are strike-slip faulting
events, 11 are normal or normal oblique, and 10 are reverse
faulting.