DISCUSSION ON ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH SETBACK DISTANCE FROM ACTIVE FAULT |
| |
| Authors: | XU Xi-wei GUO Ting-ting LIU Shao-zhuo YU Gui-hua CHEN Gui-hua WU Xi-yan |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1.Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China;2.Earthquake Administration of Shangdong Province, Jinan 250014, China |
| |
| Abstract: | Living with disaster is an objective reality that human must face especially in China. A large number of earthquake case studies, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, 2010 Yushu earthquake, 2014 Ludian earthquake, have demonstrated that earthquake heavy damage and casualties stem from ground-faulting or rupturing along seismogenic active fault, near-fault high ground accelerations and building catastrophic structural failure. Accordingly, avoidance of active faults may be an important measure to effectively reduce earthquake hazard, which may encounter in the future, but how to avoid an active fault and how much a setback distance from the active fault is required to ensure that the ground faulting and rupturing has no any direct impact on buildings. This has been the focus of debate both for domestic and foreign scholars. This paper, first of all, introduces the definition of active fault. Then, quantitative analyses are done of the high localization of earthquake surface ruptures and relationship between the localized feature of the coseismic surface ruptures and building damages associated with the measured widths of the historical earthquake surface rupture zones, and an average sstatistic width is obtained to be 30m both for the earthquake surface rupture zones and heavy damage zones along the seismogenic fault. Besides, the widths of the surface rupture zones and spatial distribution of the building damages of the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake and 2008 Wenchuan earthquake have also been analyzed to reveal a hanging-wall effect:Width of surface rupture zone or building damage zone on the hanging-wall is 2 or 3 times wider than that on its foot-wall for a dip-slip fault. Based on these latest knowledge learnt above, issues on avoidance object, minimum setback distance, location requirement of active fault for avoidance, and anti-faulting design for buildings in the surface rupture zone are further discussed. Finally, we call for national and local legislatures to accelerate the legislation for active fault survey and avoidance to normalize fault hazard zoning for general land-use planning and building construction. This preventive measure is significantly important to improve our capability of earthquake disaster reduction. |
| |
| Keywords: | active fault earthquake surface rupture zone avoidance of active fault minimum setback distance |
|
|
