The San Ramón Fault: Seismic Hazard Assessment and Controversies Surrounding a New Seismic Scenario

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Synopsis

Presentation 1: Seismic hazard assessment of the San Ramón Fault in Santiago, Chile (Horacio Dominguez)

The San Ramón Fault (SRF) is an active shallow crust fault located near to the city of Santiago, the most populated and economic center of Chile. Chilean Seismic Design Codes only account for interface events, neglecting the seismic hazard posed by the SRF, even when earthquakes with similar shallowness and magnitude have caused catastrophic losses over the world. We compute the hazard posed by the SRF and compare it to interface and inslab events. Results suggest a high dependency on the approach used and the vibration period considered.

Presentation 2: The politics of crustal faults: controversies in governing urban seismic risk in Santiago (Dr Felipe Rivera)

Although the San Ramón Fault (SRF) is one of the Chilean crustal faults with slower slip rate, it is by far the most popular. The SRF has recently been classified as active, becoming a ‘new’ hazard for nearly 2 million people living in Santiago, Chile’s capital. Whilst researchers still disagree about the seismic hazard that the SRF represents for the city, the political need for action is challenging the traditionally successful way that seismic risk has been dealt with in Chile. Touching upon issues of disaster risk reduction and urban development, the presentation unveils the challenges of seismic risk governance in the context of urban and crustal faults, which span beyond engineering.

About the speakers

Horacio Dominguez

Holder of a Master's degree in Civil Engineering Sciences from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, with expertise in Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering, particularly emphasizing Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis. During the pursuit of his Master's degree, his research focused on applying seismic hazard analyses to the San Ramón Fault. Currently serving as a research assistant at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, working on seismic risk analysis of structures using Regional Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering methodologies and seismic hazard analysis of the San Ramón Fault considering non-Poissonian models. 

Dr Felipe Rivera

Dr Felipe Rivera is an independent consultant and interdisciplinary researcher with more than 10 years of experience working in disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. His doctoral research, conducted at University College London, brought together concepts of socio-environmental justice with seismic risk governance, applied to the case of Chile. Felipe is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at EPICentre, a multi-disciplinary research centre for natural hazards resilience at UCL. He also holds a Master of Research degree from UCL and a civil engineering degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, his home country.

Registration

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Further information

The talk is organised by SECED Young Members. For further information, please contact Evangelos Yfantidis (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

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