Plenary Session

Portopia Hall
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
8:00 a.m. – 09:00 a.m.

Welcome

Ken-ya Hashimoto and Clemens Ruppel, General Co-Chairs

Opening Remarks

Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb, UFFC-S President

Technical Program

Jan D’hooge, Technical Program Chairs

2018 UFFC-S Plenary Speaker

1995 Kobe and 2011 Tohoku earthquakes

An earthquake is a sudden slip along a fault plane in the crust or the upper mantle of the Earth. This slip generates seismic waves traveling through the Earth to the ground.  They then strongly shake the ground close to the earthquake, if the earthquake is shallow and large. Such strong ground motions damage buildings and the people inside.  In 1995, shallow faults neighboring downtown Kobe suddenly slipped causing the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster. Seismic waves from the Kobe earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 were observed by seismometers all over the world. We have recovered the slip history on the faults and ground motions in downtown Kobe from the observed seismograms. The results show the features of a shallow crustal earthquake. Sixteen years after the Kobe earthquake, much greater earthquake with a magnitude of 9 occurred offshore the Tohoku district in northeastern Japan, due to slips of about 30 m along the upper boundary of the Pacific plate subducting beneath the North American plate. Tsunamis and seismic waves from the Tohoku earthquake caused the great East Japan earthquake disaster. I will explain these earthquakes and their consequences including the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Kazuki Koketsu is a professor in Applied Seismology and the Director of Outreach and Public Relations Office at the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), University of Tokyo.  He obtained Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Tokyo. He has worked at ERI as an assistant and associate professor from 1980, and also at the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University as a visiting fellow from 1989 to 1990.  He is now a member of the Subcommittees for Survey and Observation Plans and for Evaluation of Strong Ground Motion in the Headquarters, and the Seismic Safety and Structural Design Subcommittee in the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.