John McCloskey

John McCloskey
University of Edinburgh | UoE · School of GeoSciences

About

114
Publications
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Introduction

Publications

Publications (114)
Article
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Recent earthquake disasters have highlighted an urgent need for continuous advancements in approaches to reducing seismic risk. Decision-making on such strategies should consider subsurface geophysical information (e.g., seismic site response), given its direct link to seismic hazard. This may be particularly important in regions where the poorest...
Article
Full-text available
It is estimated that 2 billion people will move to cities in the next 30 years, many of which possess high seismic risk, underscoring the importance of reliable hazard assessments. Current ground motion models for these assessments typically rely on an extensive catalogue of events to derive empirical ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs), whi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent earthquake disasters have highlighted an urgent need for continuous advancements in approaches to reducing seismic risk. Decision-making on such strategies should consider subsurface geophysical information (e.g., seismic site response), given its direct link to seismic hazard. This is particularly important in regions where the poorest in s...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent earthquake disasters have highlighted an urgent need for continuous advancements in approaches to reducing seismic risk. Decision-making on such strategies should consider subsurface geophysical information (e.g., seismic site response), given its direct link to seismic hazard. This is particularly important in regions where the poorest in s...
Article
Full-text available
The underlying causes of apparent barriers to rupture propagation on earthquake faults that appear strongly to constrain rupture shape and slip distributions, are the ongoing subject of research. Preseismic stress shadows on the rupturing segment, resulting from the history of slip preceding a great earthquake, are proposed here as one possible cau...
Article
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The concept of disaster risk is cross-disciplinary by nature and reducing disaster risk has become of interest for various disciplines. Yet, moving from a collection of multiple disciplinary perspectives to integrated interdisciplinary disaster risk approaches remains a fundamental challenge. This paper reflects on the experience of a group of earl...
Article
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In this Special Issue introductory paper, we present the Tomorrow's Cities Decision Support Environment (TCDSE). As the negative impacts of natural hazards continue to escalate around the world due to increasing populations, climate change, and rapid urbanisation (among other factors and processes), there is an urgent requirement to develop structu...
Article
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This study focuses on scoring, selecting, and developing physical fragility (i.e., the probability of reaching or exceeding a certain DS given a specific hazard intensity) and/or vulnerability (i.e., the probability of impact given a specific hazard intensity) models for assets, with particular emphasis on buildings. Given a set of multiple relevan...
Article
Full-text available
Numerous approaches to earthquake risk modelling and quantification have already been proposed in the literature and/or are well established in practice. However, most of these procedures are designed to focus on risk in the context of current static exposure and vulnerability, and are therefore limited in their ability to support decisions related...
Article
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Understanding and modelling future risks from natural hazards is becoming increasingly crucial as the climate changes, human population grows, asset wealth accumulates, and societies become more urbanised and interconnected. This need is recognised by the 2015–2030 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which emphasises the importance of pre...
Article
The June 12, 2017 Karaburun-Lesvos (North Aegean Sea) earthquake occurred along the NW-SE trending Lesvos fault, along the southern strand of the North Anatolian Fault Zone. In the present study seismotectonic aspects of the 2017 Karaburun-Lesvos earthquake and its aftershock sequence are studied. A rupture model based on finite source analysis of...
Article
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Tomorrow’s Cities is the £20m United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF) Urban Disaster Risk Hub. The Hub aims to support the delivery of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and priorities 1 to 3 of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 2015-2030. We work in four cities: Istanb...
Article
Grandparents in earthquake-prone Chile teach children to identify load-bearing walls, and the Philippines has developed an internationally respected disaster management system. Do such low-cost, social adaptations increase community resilience to earthquakes, or are poorer countries forever doomed to large death tolls in small earthquakes? We attem...
Article
Deep-rooted socio-ecological and technical systems, values and lifestyles, ‘locked in’ by vested interests and flows of power, underpin the interconnected problems of climate change, hazard vulnerability and poverty. A ‘shallow’ approach to co-production, with its focus on knowledge exchange and shared learning between individuals, struggles to gai...
Article
The innovation process is central to effective adaption to climate change and development challenges, but models from business and management tend to dominate innovation theory, which sits outside the adaption-development paradigm. This paper presents an alternative conceptual framework to visualize innovations as pathways across the adaption-devel...
Article
Full-text available
Examining fault activity over several earthquake cycles is necessary for long term modeling of the faults strain budget and stress state. While this requires knowledge of coseismic slip distributions for successive earthquakes along the fault, these exist only for the most recent events. However, overlying the Sunda Trench, sparsely distributed cor...
Presentation
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The seismic series that followed the Mw=5.2 January 21 st and Mw=6.3 January 25 th 2016 earthquakes was felt along the whole Spanish coast surrounding the Alboran Sea and, particularly in Melilla city. The Mw=6.3 January 25 th 2016 event was felt with maximum intensity of VI in that city, producing some non-structural damage to buildings. Moreover,...
Poster
Full-text available
The Omori decay of aftershocks is often perturbed by large secondary events which present particular, but not uncommon, challenges to aftershock forecasting. The Mw = 7.8, 25 April 2015, Gorkha, Nepal earthquake was followed on 12 May by the Mw = 7.3 Kodari earthquake, superimposed its own aftershocks on the Gorkha sequence, immediately invalidatin...
Article
Spatially heterogeneous inversions for the slip in major earthquakes are typically only available for modern, instrumentally recorded events. Stress reconstructions on active faults, which are potentially vital elements of earthquake hazard assessment, are usually based on one or two instrumental inversions and some semi-quantitative information co...
Article
We perform an analysis of the seismicity response of the San Jacinto Fault Zone to static Coulomb stress changes from the 1992 Landers earthquake sequence. Results show that, in general, stress changes forecast rate changes well: we find a significant positive correlation between the change in rate and the magnitude of the Coulomb stress change, wi...
Article
This paper contains a critical exploration of the social dimensions of the science-humanitarian relationship. Drawing on literature on the social role of science and on the social dimensions of humanitarian practice, it analyses a science-humanitarian partnership for disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia, an area threatened by...
Article
Full-text available
We present a numerical investigation of the effect that static stress perturbations due to fluid injection have on a nearby active fault where the fluid does not come in physical contact with the fault. Our modelling employs a lattice Boltzmann pore diffusion model coupled with a quasi-dynamic earthquake rupture model. As diffusivities and friction...
Article
Full-text available
The extent to which interseismic coupling controls the slip distribution of large megathrust earthquakes is unclear, with some authors proposing that it is the primary control and others suggesting that stress changes from previous earthquakes are of first-order importance. Here, we develop a detailed stress history of the Sunda megathrust, modifie...
Article
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Majority of recent earthquake stress interaction studies and deformation models used to explain elastic behaviour for the crust and upper mantle shows that coseismic stress loading plays an important role for triggering subsequent events. However the time span between source and subsequent event can vary from hours to decades and coseismic static s...
Article
We undertook a reconstruction of more than 200 years of deformation on the Sunda mega-thrust using the history of vertical displacement recorded in the stratigraphy of coral micro-atolls. This reconstruction gave an unprecedented opportunity to understand the distributions of slip on the recent series of great earthquakes and its relationship with...
Article
Along the Sunda trench, the annual growth rings of coral microatolls store long term records of tectonic deformation. Spread over large areas of an active megathrust fault, they offer the possibility of high resolution reconstructions of slip for a number of paleo-earthquakes. These data are complex with spatial and temporal variations in uncertain...
Article
Estimates of spatially heterogeneous coupling between plates in subduction zones provide a basis for forecasting high slip in future events; strong coupling between earthquakes, producing rapid strain accumulation, should be correlated with high slip during the next earthquake. However, studies comparing coupling and slip do not show the expected c...
Article
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Until expensive engineering solutions become more universally available, the objective targeting of resources at demonstrably effective, low-cost interventions might help reverse the trend of increasing mortality in earthquakes. Death tolls in earthquakes are the result of complex interactions between physical effects, such as the exposure of the p...
Article
Full-text available
Earthquakes occur when stress level on a fault reaches the yielding stress. Inability to know neither absolute stress levels nor yielding stresses on a fault is a major obstacle for seismologists to forecast future earthquakes. The technique of mapping Coulomb stress changes due to earthquakes inherently assumes an arbitrary zero stress level as a...
Article
Shallow earthquakes are a response of crustal faults to stress. Faults are loaded by the slow, heterogeneous accumulation of tectonic stress and the almost instantaneous interaction with neighbouring earthquakes. These effects allow us to model the increase of stress on known active faults. In particular we can calculate changes in stress that can...
Article
Full-text available
Injection of fluid into the subsurface is a common technique and is used to optimise returns from hydrocarbon plays (e.g. enhanced oil recovery, hydrofacturing of shales) and geothermal sites as well as for the sequestering carbon dioxide. While it is well understood that stress perturbations caused by fluid injections can induce/trigger earthquake...
Article
Statistical tests of the consistency of observed aftershock sequences with the change in Coulomb Failure Function are based on evaluation of the Coulomb index for the aftershock sequence given the calculated spatial distribution of the change in CFF. Tests of the statistical significance of the results require a choice of null hypothesis, which inv...
Article
Shallow earthquakes are a response of crustal faults to stress. Faults are loaded by the slow, heterogeneous accumulation of tectonic stress and the almost instantaneous interaction with neighbouring earthquakes. These effects allow us to model the increase of stress on known active faults. In particular we can calculate changes in stress that can...
Article
Numerous observations have shown a general spatial correlation between positive Coulomb failure stress changes due to an earthquake and the locations of aftershocks. However this correlation does not give any indication of the rate from which we can infer the magnitude using the Gutenberg-Richter law. Dieterich's rate- and state-dependent model can...
Article
Full-text available
Injection of fluid into the subsurface alters the stress in the crust and can induce earthquakes. The science of assessing the risk of induced seismicity from such ventures is still in its infancy despite public concern. We plan to use a fault network model in which stress perturbations due to fluid injection induce earthquakes. We will use this mo...
Article
Knowledge, coping strategies, and expertise that have accumulated within indigenous communities in response to repeated hazard events, are an important part of disaster risk reduction. There is a tendency, however, for indigenous societies to be treated as if they are separate from and contrast sharply with modern industrial societies. Increasingly...
Article
Full-text available
The Mw 8.8 mega-thrust earthquake and tsunami that occurred on 27 February 2010 offshore the Maule region, Chile, was not unexpected. A clearly identified seismic gap existed in an area where tectonic loading has been accumulating since the great 1835 earthquake. Here we jointly invert tsunami and geodetic data to derive a robust model for the cose...
Article
We have investigated the total Coulomb stress, including secular loading and earthquake interaction of 23 earthquakes (M>7.0) that have occurred on a part of the Sunda megathrust, west of Sumatra starting at an arbitrary, uniform zero of stress in 1797. All but 4 earlier ones show stress load to failure relationship due to the preceding earthquakes...
Article
The recent sequence of great earthquakes on the Sunda megathrust off western Sumatra has provided seismologists with a large quantity of modern quality data, both seismic and geodetic. Sumatra has, as a result, become a focus of study for seismologists, as it is where the next insights are likely to be made in our understanding of the constraints o...
Article
The recent sequence of large earthquakes in the eastern Indian ocean has ruptured almost 2500km of the Sunda megathrust. The September 2009 Mw 7.6 earthquake under Padang did not relax the megathrust significantly and as a result the 300km Mentawai segment remains largely unbroken: the threat of a large Mw>8.5 event to the city of Padang (populatio...
Article
The Sumatran coast and offshore islands are colonised with coral microatolls whose growth habit records the vertical component of deformation extending back up to 700 years. It has been possible to invert these unique data for the slip distribution on historical earthquakes though, due to the scarcity of coral paleogeodetic sites and their limited...
Article
On 30 September 2009, the city of Padang in Indonesia was rocked by an earthquake with a moment magnitude of Mw = 7.6. Despite its size, the earthquake did not rupture the Sunda megathrust and did not significantly relax the 200 years of accumulated stress on the Mentawai segment. The megathrust strain-energy budget remains substantially unchanged...
Article
The sequence of great earthquakes which has ruptured more than 2000km of the Sunda megathrust from the Andaman Islands to the Sunda Strait in the last 5 years has left a 300km gap under the Mentawai Islands to the west of the city of Padang. The plate interface beneath the Mentawai patch is firmly coupled, has not experienced a large earthquake for...
Article
We address the generic problem of testing for scale-invariance in extreme events, i.e. are the biggest events in a population simply a scaled model of those of smaller size, or are they in some way different? Are large earthquakes for example `characteristic', do they `know' how big they will be before the event nucleates, or is the size of the eve...
Article
Forecasts of the next likely megathrust earthquake which will occur off the western coast of Sumatra, possibly in the near future, indicate that it will likely be tsunamigenic and could be more devastating than the 2004 event. Hundreds of simulations of potential earthquakes and their tsunamis show that, while the earthquake is fundamentally unpred...
Article
An important question in understanding the science of subduction zone earthquakes concerns the distributions of plate coupling, their longevity and the strength of their control on rupture nucleation, propagation and termination; are past earthquakes good models for future ones? The Sumatran coast and offshore islands are colonised with coral micro...
Article
Full-text available
1] If subduction zone earthquakes conform to a characteristic model, in which persistent segments fail at predictable stress levels due to the steady accumulation of tectonic loading, historical seismicity may constrain the occurrence of future events. We test this model for earthquakes on the Sumatra-Andaman megathrust and other subduction zones u...
Article
Vertical coseismic displacements recorded in corals on the Sumatran forearc offer a unique opportunity to reconstruct past earthquakes on the Sunda megathrust. These observations not only constrain the time and magnitude of historical earthquakes but also place some bounds on possible slip distributions for them. Here we explore the range of slip d...
Article
Social idiosyncrasies confounding cross-cultural scientific interventions on an intra-regional and international scale continue to blight the positive benefits robust science offers to vulnerable communities inhabiting areas prone to natural hazards. The sustained malice inflicted by these phenomena upon socioeconomic systems epitomises the perilou...
Article
Full-text available
Stress interaction modelling is routinely used to explain the spatial relationships between earthquakes and their aftershocks. On 28 October 2008 a M6.4 earthquake occurred near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border killing several hundred and causing widespread devastation. A second M6.4 event occurred 12 hours later 20km to the south east. By making so...
Article
We address the generic problem of testing for scale-invariance in extreme events, i.e. are the biggest events in a population simply a scaled model of those of smaller size, or are they in some way different? Are large earthquakes for example `characteristic', do they `know' how big they will be before the event nucleates, or is the size of the eve...
Article
Five Mw>7.5 earthquakes have occurred along the Sunda megathrust since the Mw9.2 Sumatra -- Andaman Islands earthquake on the 26th December 2004. Understanding the processes controlling the recurrence of these events is vital for quantifying earthquake hazard in the region. Sea level changes evident in coral growth records have been used to reconst...
Article
Vertical coseismic displacements recorded in corals on the Sumatran forearc offer a unique opportunity to reconstruct past earthquakes on the Sunda megathrust. These observations not only constrain the time and magnitude of the 1797 event but also place some bounds on possible slip distributions for this great earthquake. Here we explore the range...
Article
The great Sumatran earthquake of 2004 allows us to assess the statistics and statistical stability of the global earthquake catalogue from the digital era. A key question is: do such mega-earthquakes continue to follow the Gutenberg–Richter (G–R) trend1, or is there an observable cut-off 2? Physically, there must be a cut-off at a rupture length le...
Article
The Sumatra–Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004 (Boxing Day 2004) and its tsunami will endure in our memories as one of the worst natural disasters of our time. For geophysicists, the scale of the devastation and the likelihood of another equally destructive earthquake set out a series of challenges of how we might use science not only to unders...
Article
Full-text available
Several independent indicators imply a high probability of a great (M > 8) earthquake rupture of the subduction megathrust under the Mentawai Islands of West Sumatra. The human consequences of such an event depend crucially on its tsunamigenic potential, which in turn depends on unpredictable details of slip distribution on the megathrust and how r...
Article
A number of studies indicate that a first order causal relationship exists between the location of aftershocks and the areas that have received positive coseismic static stress changes following a major earthquake. Some studies have also argued the influence of dynamic stress triggering on aftershocks for a short period of time (up to several weeks...
Article
The current earthquake sequence off the coast of Sumatra illustrates both the potential, and the difficulties, of using stress based models to assess the likely location of future large earthquakes. Following the 26 December 2004 event, we showed that stress had increased on the Sumatra Fault as well as further south along the subduction zone, and...
Article
The importance of science within hazard mitigation cannot be underestimated. Robust mitigation polices rely strongly on a sound understanding of the science underlying potential natural disasters and the transference of that knowledge from the scientific community to the general public via governments and policy makers. We aim to investigate how an...
Article
Seismicity spatial and temporal patterns are strongly influenced by stress interaction between faults. However the effects of such interaction on earthquake statistics is not yet well understood. Computer models provide accurate, large and complete datasets to investigate this issue and also have the benefit of allowing direct comparison of seismic...
Article
The 12/09/07 Mentawai Islands, M8.4 earthquake may, by its waywardness, contribute greatly both to our understanding of the occurrence of great subduction zone events and to their tsunamigenic potential. The earthquake nucleated off-shore Bengkulu in a region which likely experienced up to 18m of slip in the 1833 earthquake; at current rates of con...
Article
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We investigate controls on tsunami generation and propagation in the near-field of great megathrust earthquakes using a series of numerical simulations of subduction and tsunamigenesis on the Sumatran forearc. The Sunda megathrust here is advanced in its seismic cycle and may be ready for another great earthquake. We calculate the seafloor displace...
Article
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Models for earthquake generation employing high-dimensional cellular automata reproduce realistic event sequences which conform to the Gutenberg-Richter relation. These models allow individual degrees of freedom to many small areal increments of a fault face. Simple, low-dimensional spring-block models with as few as two blocks have been shown, how...
Article
Full-text available
Interaction stresses from recent great earthquakes on the Sunda Trench subduction zone have made another earthquake, this time under the Mentawai Islands, more likely. The megathrust under Siberut Island has not ruptured since the great 1797 earthquake and may be ripe for triggered failure. Paleogeodetic studies support a range of possible events,...
Article
After the last mega events in the Sumatra region, the likelihood of a large earthquake effecting the west of Sumatra is considerably increased. As already shown by previous studies, the coseismic Coulomb stress increase due to the combination of the December 2004 and the March 2005 events is high under the island of Siberut, and the Sunda trench me...
Article
Ian Main, Bruce Malamud, Chris Bean and John McCloskey summarize the presentations and lively debate at the British Geophysical Association's annual British Discussion Meeting on Scale-Invariance and Scale-Dependence in Earth Structure and Dynamics.
Article
Full-text available
We explore the possible stress triggering relationship of the M≥ 6.4 earthquakes that occurred in Kerman Province, southern Iran since 1981. We calculated stress changes due to both coseismic sudden movement in the upper crust and the time-dependent viscous relaxation of the lower crust and/or upper mantle following the event. Four events of M≥ 6.4...
Article
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s In this paper we describe a machine vision system capable of high-resolution measurement of fluid velocity fields in complex 2D models of rock, providing essential data for the validation of the numerical models which are widely applied in the oil and petroleum industries. Digital models, incorporating the properties of real rock, are first gener...
Article
Following the great 26 December Sumatra - Andaman Islands earthquake, we computed the Coulomb stress changes on other faults in the region and found that the stress had increased by up to 8 bars on both the Sunda Trench, immediately south of the 2004 rupture plane, and the Sumatra fault which runs down the center of the Island. In a paper published...
Article
In 2003 an event M=6.5 occurred in the structurally complex Bingol region, Eastern Turkey, with a right-lateral strike-slip mechanism. This earthquake is not compatible with Coulomb stress changes due to the preceding large events and regional stress loading computed with deep-slip or virtual slip approaches over the 2003 rupture area since 1784. A...
Article
Immediately after the 26 Dec. 2004 Sumatra - Andaman Islands earthquake, we computed the stress changes due to it on the Sunda Trench to the south of the Dec. rupture plane and on the Sumatra Fault which runs down the center of the island. Our results clearly showed a significant increase in stress of up to 9 bars on both structures; stress changes...
Article
Full-text available
The scale invariance of geological material and the consequent absence of a length scale on which to base the upscaling of measurements made on geological samples represent a serious challenge to the prediction of fluid behaviour in rock at economically interesting scales. Numerical simulation is an important tool for understanding constraints in t...
Article
Full-text available
The 2003 Bingol earthquake (Mw = 6.4) occurred very close to a region along the east Anatolian fault zone which was identified in 2002 as posing a particularly high seismic risk. This damaging earthquake occurred on a conjugate right-lateral blind fault that was inconsistent with the stress-change field calculated for preceding large earthquakes in...