Forecasting the hazards associated with future earthquakes along this > 700 km long fault requires a comprehensive understanding of past fault behaviour.
Important to further development of the Fang Hot Springs geothermal area is an understanding of the fault system geometry that conducts hot water to the surface.
Immediately after the earthquake, the agency sent another vessel, Kairei, to deploy ocean bottom seismometers in the area of the earthquake to monitor aftershocks and get a better understanding of the fault zone.
For accurate evaluation of strong motion taking into account these effects, an understanding of the fault rupture process, the attenuation structure of seismic waves and, especially, the local soil conditions is indispensible.
The many kilometers of visible fault breaks on the surface of the earth presented scientists with opportunities for field investigations that ultimately lead to an improved understanding of the fault scarps that earthquakes often generate.
Although the units went off scale after 8.5 seconds at Gifu and 13.5 seconds at Nagoya (probably due to an inundation of large S-waves) the seismograms they produced have been beneficial for seismologists to develop an understanding of the fault rupture process.
Nevertheless, in the last decade, our understanding of earthquake faulting in subduction zones has greatly improved through fault rock studies in accretionary prisms.
However, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program IODPP) Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) and fault rock studies in accretionary prisms exhumed from source depths of subduction earthquakes have greatly improved our understanding of earthquake faulting in subduction zones.
