Faults & Earthquakes

The Failles et Séismes (Faults and Earthquakes) team is a multi-disciplinary team interested in characterising the behaviour of faults, and their associated hazards, over seismic cycles. We explore the fundamental characteristics of fault systems through a unique collaboration between experimental rock mechanics, geodetic and seismological observations, all of which are supplemented with theoretical and numerical modelling of earthquake cycles.

The projects run by the team are supported by National (ANR, INSU etc.) grants along with European Research Council grants.

Projects


    REALISM (PI Alexandre Schubnel):  Reproducing EArthquakes in the Laboratory: Imaging, Speed and Mineralogy


    GEO4D (PI Romain Jolivet): Toward detection and assimilation of transient slip events along faults from space!


    PERSISMO (PI Harsha S. Bhat):  Predicting Energy Release in fault Systems: Integrating Simulations, Machine learning, Observations


    The CRL Near Fault Observatory (P. Briole, E. Klein, H. Lyon-Caen, A. Rigo) : Corinth Rift Laboratory
    The Corinth Rift Laboratory is a European pilot site created in the 1990s to carry out long-term observations and multidisciplinary research on faults and earthquakes mechanics. It is located west of the Gulf of Corinth, one of the most seismic regions in Europe with several earthquakes of magnitude greater than 6 per century sometimes associated with tsunamis. Since antiquity, the city of Patras has thus been destroyed several times. The seismicity rate is very high there (more than 10,000 earthquakes of magnitude ~ 1-3 per year) associated with an extension rate greater than 10 mm / year.
    The CRL laboratory relies on several tools:
    – an observatory that brings together around 80 continuous measurement stations (seismometers, GPS, extensometers, tide gauges, etc.), including 50 belonging to the CNRS, all of which constitute one of the NFOs (Near Fault Observatories) of the European research infrastructure EPOS. This observatory is jointly administered by the CNRS, the National Observatory of Athens, the Universities of Athens and Patras, and Charles University in Prague;
    – specific projects (for example temporary experiences);
    – an annual summer school, CRLSchool;
    – a database and products generated by the Observatory, largely hosted at the ENS.
    The ENS shares the responsibility for the deformation component (GPS, InSAR) with the Athens observatory and supervises all seismological data with the Côte d’Azur University, the IPGP and the Greek universities.
    See the website http://crlab.eu/ for more details on observations, access to the data and scientific results.


    Characterization of historic earthquakes from the historic building, led by A. Montabert (doctorant), Maria Lancieri (IRSN), Hélène Dessales (ENS-AOROC) and Hélène Lyon-Caen
    The objective of this project is to obtain constraints on the seismic movement having caused disturbances, destructions observed on certain historic buildings. Associating archaeologists, historians, seismologists and civil engineers, the project seeks to model from a digital model calibrated by observations, the response of the frame to different realistic seismic stresses. A test site, the Church of Sant’Agata in the Mugello region (Italy) is studied.

People