Recovery Operations in the Philippines and Earthquake Hazards in India

Synopsis

Talk 1 (Andrea Manenti): This talk will present a brief summary of Andrea’s deployment with the International Federation of the Red Cross in support of the Philippines Red Cross Shelter team, in order to develop a Shelter Recovery Strategy based on the initial Emergency Response.

Talk 2 (Alice Turner): In this talk, Alice will present work from the seismotectonics group at the Bullard Laboratories, University of Cambridge, focusing on two projects in India: one investigating the depth of earthquake faults, and another using fieldwork campaigns to map active faults.

Part 1 — Seismogenic thickness of the Indian Subcontinent

Intraplate regions such as the Indian Subcontinent pose significant seismic hazard, yet low event recurrence makes hazard assessment challenging. The maximum depth at which earthquakes nucleate — the seismogenic thickness — constrains the maximum possible fault dimensions and, consequently, the magnitude of future events. Using recordings of seismic waves at teleseismic distances, earthquake depths are determined across the subcontinent, extending reliable estimates down to M~w~ 4.6 and improving spatial coverage of the seismogenic thickness. By integrating these depth estimates with lithospheric thermal structure and rheological modelling, and incorporating the locations of major historical earthquakes, we develop a framework for evaluating the spatial distribution and likely magnitude of future seismic hazard across the region.

Part 2 — Mapping active faults in the Himalayas

In the second part, Alice will present fieldwork from the Himalayas — a major active plate boundary — where geomorphological analysis of the landscape has been used to identify recently active faults.

 

About the speakers

Andrea Manenti is a Director of Booth King Partnership, a Civil and Structural Engineering firm based in Manchester, UK. Andrea has dedicated the last 18 years of his free time to the international development sector. Serving as an active delegate for the British Red Cross as a Sanitation Engineer and for the Canadian Red Cross as a Shelter Delegate, Andrea has undertaken extensive Red Cross training in his own time to strengthen his ability to support technical teams and be deployed when his specialist expertise is required in response to natural disasters or conflict situations.

Alice Turner is an earthquake seismologist. Her research focuses on understanding what causes earthquakes on Earth and the Moon by analysing data from the seismic waves that are created during an earthquake. During her PhD at the University of Oxford, Alice studied repeating earthquakes (earthquakes that happen over and over again in the same location) on the Earth and the Moon. She then took up a research fellowship at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, where she continued to work on earthquakes on other Planets. This work aimed to understand better the causes of quakes on other planets, which will help to improve our knowledge of their interior and evolution. Alice joined the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge as a research associate in January 2025, where she will be working on a project to understand earthquakes and seismicity in India better.

 

Registration

The event is open to all and is free to attend. Please join the meeting via Teams* by clicking on this link. No registration is required.

Further information

This online talk is jointly organised by SECED Young Members, EEFIT, and IStructE Midland Counties Group. For further information, please contact Mohamed Elzeadani (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

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