Intensive Programme - Mathematical Models in Seismology
4 - 15 July 2011, University of L'Aquila
SeisMath IP 2012
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Welcome to the 2011 Intensive Programme (IP) in
Mathematical Models in Seismology
4 - 15 July 2011, University of L'Aquila
Coordinator: Bruno Rubino
Coordinating Institution: University of L'Aquila (Italy)
Location: University of L'Aquila (Italy)
Dedicated to the memory of Giulia Carnevale, as a symbol of all the students of the University of L'Aquila who tragically died during the earthquake on April 6, 2009
Scientific Committee
- Nicholas Alikakos (Department of Mathematics, National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, Greece),
- Aysegul Askan (Civil Engineering Department, Middle East Technical University, Turkey),
- Francesco Benedettini (Department of Structural, Water and Geotechnical Engineering, University of L'Aquila, Italy),
- Alvaro Corral (Centre de Recerca Matematica, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain)
- Armin Iske (Department of Mathematics, University of Hamburg, Germany),
- Warner Marzocchi (INGV, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Rome, Italy),
- Antonino Morassi (Department of Georesources and Territory, University of Udine, Italy),
- Roberto Paolucci (Structural Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy),
- Mircea Radulian (Scientific Director National Institute for Earth Physics, Bucharest, Romania)
- Bruno Rubino (Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics, University of L'Aquila, Italy),
- Chrysoula Tsogka (Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Crete, Greece),
- Gerhard Wilhelm Weber (Institute of Applied Mathematics, Middle East Technical University, Turkey)
List of Partner Institutions and Local Coordinators of the SeisMath IP 2013
University of L'Aquila (Italy) - Coordinator, Prof. Bruno Rubino
Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), Prof. Josef Slapal
University of Hamburg (Germany), Prof. Armin Iske
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), Prof. Nicholas Alikakos
University of Crete (Greece), Prof. Chrysoula Tsogka
Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Prof. Roberto Paolucci
University of Udine (Italy), Prof. Antonino Morassi
Tehnical University of Cluj Napoca (Romania), Prof. Petrica Pop
Autonomous University of Barcelona (Catalunia, Spain), Prof. Aureli Alabert
Middle East Technical University (Turkey), Prof. Sinan Akkar
University of Maine (France), Prof. Sohbi Sahraoui
Second University of Naples (Italy), Prof. Eugenio Lippiello
University of Naples (Italy), Prof. Aldo Zollo
Presentation
Earthquakes occur nearly constantly around Europe in places like Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Turkey. But earthquakes can occur almost anywhere. Italy is a well-known complex earthquake zone. In Italy there is the collision of Africa and Europe, its highly fractured and broken up, there is a lot of micro plates moving around, which creates a lot of different types of fault action.
An earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale and 6.3 in the moment magnitude scale hit L'Aquila on April 6th, 2009. There have been a large number of minor tremors since December 2008. Along with the stories of tragedy in L'Aquila, there are also stories that the earthquake was predicted, and that the predictions were ignored. Earthquake prediction remains an elusive goal of seismology. Earthquake source mechanisms are complex and involve many variables and factors. Earthquake prediction can be divided into long-, medium- and short-term phases. The short-term prediction of earthquakes has considerable allure. However, it is beset by problems. Although earthquakes are complex multi-scale phenomena, we now have much better models for earthquake nucleation and rupture processes, associated phenomena such as tsunamis, and tools with which earthquakes can be carefully studied from both deterministic and statistical points of view.
The Intensive Programme (IP) called "Mathematical Models in Seismology - SeisMath 2011" will consist of a set of short courses and seminars. Contributors will take into account methods, modelling and simulations related to above mentioned aspects of seismology. Although the need of newly developed mathematical modelling within seismology is very strong, its clear identification as an interdisciplinary research/training context at a European level is still in progress. The present programme aims to provide a relevant contribution to this process by exploiting the scientific competencies of the partners. The short courses will be taught by physicians, geologists, engineers and mathematicians.The programme is addressed mainly to MSc and PhD students in Applied Mathematics, but also in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Applied Physics.
The participation of students and teachers from the partner universities will be supported by the LLP Erasmus Programme. The programme will be held in the period July 4-15, 2011.
Reimbursement
Applicants from partner institutions are eligible for a reimbursement of living and travel expenses.
This contribution is offered by the LLP Italian National Agency. 
We assume to select:
- around 30 students (MSc or PhD) for the contribution for travel costs and the contribution for accommodation and subsistence costs: this corresponds to about 3 students for each partner institution.
- around 10 teachers for the contribution for travel costs and the contribution for accommodation and subsistence costs.
The contact person of each institution in the Organizing Committee is responsible for the selection of students in their universities.
Details about Reimbursement
Reservation for lodging and contribution for subsistence costs.
Please notice that students and teachers from partner universities will be hosted in university premises free of charge for the whole period of the IP. Unfortunately, the Erasmus agency applies a very low daily amount for subsistence costs of students (24 euro per day, both for lodging and full board). That's why, in addition to the accommodation, we can confirm that we will only be able to offer students free access to the university canteen (open on working days). We hope we'll be able to offer some additional support to students, but we cannot guarantee anything at the moment.
Lectures
Lecture 1
TITLE
Plate tectonics, faulting and earthquakes
HOURS
3
LECTURER
Dr. A. Arda Özacar, Middle East Technical University
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this short course, students will have an understanding of the dynamic processes within the Earth from seismic and geologic data.
TOPICS
- Basics of plate tectonics, rheology of Earth’s interior, ductile vs brittle deformation
- Physics of faulting, elastic rebound theory and seismic cycle
- Elastic deformation and seismic waves
- Plate boundaries and kinematics
Lecture 2
TITLE
Seismic source analysis
HOURS
5
LECTURER
Dr. A. Arda Özacar, Middle East Technical University
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this short course, students will have an understanding of the processes involved in seismic source analysis and it’s interpretation from active tectonic perspective.
TOPICS
- Earthquake location and magnitude
- Equivalent forces and first motion analysis
- Moment tensor and waveform modeling
- Source parameters and earthquake statistics
- Tectonic interpretations
Lecture 3
TITLE
Seismic Hazard Analysis
HOURS
8
LECTURER
Dr. Sinan Akkar, Middle East Technical University
TOPICS
- Introduction: Brief review on the components and types of seismic hazard analysis
- Seismicity and earthquake recurrence models
- Ground-motion prediction equations
- Deterministic seismic hazard analysis
- Probabilistic seismc hazard analysis
- Uniform hazard spectrum concept
Lecture 4
TITLE
Strong Ground Motion Simulations
HOURS
4
LECTURER
Dr. Aysegul Askan, Middle East Technical University
OBJECTIVES
In this short course, basics of the current ground motion simulation methods will be presented. By the end of this course, students will be able to simulate strong ground motions of a particular event with well-known source, path and site parameters.
TOPICS
- Introduction: Brief review on the components and types of seismic hazard analysis
- Introduction to ground motion simulations
- Current methods
- Source, path and site modeling
- Case study
- Summary
Lecture 5
TITLE
Modeling under uncertainty for tsunami early warning
HOURS
8
LECTURER
Prof. Jörn Behrens, University of Hamburg
OBJECTIVES
The course „modeling under uncertainty for tsunami early warning“ will introduce to the basic methods in tsunami modeling and to the concepts involved in deriving forecasts from the models. One of the main objectives is to introduce the students to diverse fields of uncertainty – and possibly error – in a realistic simulation environment. Starting from basics in tsunami physics, we will go through the diverse stages of the tsunami simulation chain and learn about the mathematization of the problem as well as sources of uncertainty in each step. In the end, we will have an overview of how to derive tsunami forecasts, once an earthquake occurred, and how to use simulation based tools for preparing for the worst.
TOPICS
Lecture 1: Introduction
Introduction to the topic
• Components of a tsunami early warning system (TEWS)
• Application fields for tsunami modeling
• Sources of uncertainty in the modeling chain
• Principles and simple heuristics in tsunami physics
Lecture 2: Developing a tsunami model
• Principles of wave propagation
• Deriving the basic equations
• Discretization methods
• The problem of large scale discrepancy
• Multi-scale methods with multi-resolution meshes
• One example for an operational tsunami model
Lecture 3: How to run a tsunami model and how to judge the results
• Prerequisites for running a tsunami simulation
• Purposes for tsunami simulation
• Source modeling
• Bathymetry and Topography
• How to parameterize complex behavior in the inundation phase
• Validation of simulation results
• Visualization and interpretation of results
Lecture 4: The forecasting problem
• Near-field vs. far-field tsunami early warning and sensitivity of the problem
• Different approaches to forecasting: Decision matrix, linear inversion, multi-sensor
• A simple model for uncertainty propagation
• Consequences for uncertainty reduction from the simple model
• Multi-sensor near-field tsunami early warning
• Summary and Conclusions
Lecture 6
TITLE
Introduction to seismic wave propagation
HOURS
8
LECTURER
Prof. Roberto Paolucci, Politecnico di Milano
OBJECTIVES
To introduce elementary concepts of seismic wave propagation and to work out several applications where the effects of geological irregularities on earthquake ground motion are studied by analytical approaches.
TOPICS
- Introduction to body and surface waves
- Initial and boundary conditions problems
- Reflection and transmission coefficients
- Seismic response of a layer over half space
- Seismic wave propagation in 2D and 3D: some analytical solutions
Lecture 7
TITLE
Kernel-based reconstruction from scattered seismic data
HOURS
8
LECTURER
Prof. Dr. Armin Iske, University of Hamburg
OBJECTIVES
This course gives a mathematical introduction to kernel-based approximation from scattered seismic data, where special emphasis is placed on the automated detection of singularities and on multiresolution algorithms. Selected computational aspects, especially concerning efficient implementation of the proposed algorithms, will be addressed.
General objectives:
good understanding of basic algorithms and models in kernel-based scattered data approximation
TOPICS
- kernel-based approximation: problem formulation, kernel functions and their native function spaces
- optimality of the reconstruction scheme: variational properties, orthogonality and best approximation, pointwise optimality
- conditioning of the reconstruction scheme: condition number, Lebesgue constant, construction of stable bases.
- penalized least squares approximation: theory and implementation
- multilevel approximation algorithms: theory and implementation
Lecture 8
TITLE
Stochastic Models and Statistical Techniques Applied to Earthquake Catalogue Data
HOURS
4
LECTURER
Dr. Anna Maria Lombardi, INGV, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Rome
OBJECTIVES
This course gives an introduction to probabilistic models for earthquakes occurrence, where special emphasis is placed on the point processes. Some aspects concerning the forecasting of earthquakes and the validation of the models will be addressed.
TOPICS
- Main topics on the probabilistic modeling, with special emphasis to point processe
- Basic stochastic space-time-magnitude models of Earthquake Catalogue Data. Models for seismic sequences. ETAS model.
- Maximum likelihood estimation of models parameters, declustering techniques, simulation
- Fitting and testing point process models
- Forecasting of earthquakes
