Engineering Seismology

Welcome the engineering seismology group of the Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at ETH-Zurich. Engineering seismology combines the disciplines of seismology, geology, geophysics, and earthquake engineering for the evaluation of deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard and risk. The research covers palaeo-, archaeo-, and historical seismology, earthquake catalogues, the charactersation of potential seismic sources of future large earthquakes, ground motion prediction equations, site effects and microzonation, including phenomena such as liquefaction of sediments, and rock- and slope instabilities. The estimation of ground motion parameters, vulnerability assessment, and scenario earthquake modeling are used for earthquake engineering applications, for the Swiss building code and regional land-use planning. The research covers all fields of observational seismology and the use of numerical modeling tools to estimate the parameters, both in a deterministic and probabilistic sense. The results from the analysis of past earthquakes and the seismic recordings from the country-wide network of strong motion and weak motion measuring stations are the basic data to test and validate the numerical prediction, and to improve models for seismic hazard and risk assessment in Switzerland.