Ranking Earthquake Sources Using Spatial Residuals of Seismic Scenarios: Methodology Application to the 1909 Benavente Earthquake

Abstract

Historical earthquakes are of major importance in the analysis of seismic hazards, in particular for stable continental regions. In this article, we propose a methodology that uses seismic scenarios to provide constraints on the location of the seismic source of historical earthquakes. Our methodology involves generating seismic scenarios for the proposed seismic sources and comparing the results to the observed intensity field of the earthquake. To avoid the bias related to strongly heterogeneously distributed datasets, we focus on data points that are useful in discriminating between competing ruptures. These data are identified by the spatial patterns of residuals between seismic scenarios produced for each source. We apply this methodology to a test event—the 1999 Athens earthquake—for which both the magnitude and location are constrained by independent data, and to the 1909 Benavente earthquake, for which the magnitude is constrained by seismological studies, but the location is uncertain due to the very poor azimuthal coverage available. Within its application limits, the proposed methodology was capable of identifying the source of the Athens earthquake amongst different ruptures located few kilometers apart. The analysis performed for the 1909 Benavente earthquake suggests that the eastern strand of the lower Tagus Valley fault zone is the most likely seismic source for earthquake, amongst those proposed in the literature.