Summary Since 1932, whenever an earthquake is felt around the Belgian territory, the ROB sends out national inquiries to each Belgian municipality to construct an intensity map of the felt area. Since 2002, this effort is complemented with the online “Did You Feel it?” web service. Both the communal and DYFI? intensity datasets have allowed identifying various regions where the Belgian subsurface modifies earthquake ground motion differently. This understanding became very useful to interpret the earthquake impact of historical events, happening long before our modern dense seismometer network. However, when a destructive earthquake occurs, (online) inquiries are not sufficient to estimate the epicentral impact. A macroseismic field survey needs to be organized to estimate building vulnerability and -damage and to determine epicentral intensity, to decide if a commune can be reimbursed by the national disaster fund. In France, this task is performed by the Macroseismic Intervention Group (GIM), recently extended towards Spain and Andorra. In Belgium, such group is currently lacking. In this seminar, I will explain the context of the GIM and open the discussion to what is needed to create a GIM-BE group.
Bio
Koen Van Noten is a structural and earthquake geologist working at the Seismology-Gravimetry department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB). He holds a PhD in geology obtained at the KULeuven and also worked at Geological Survey of Belgium. Koen’s research topics span the disciplines of structural geology, near-surface geophysics and seismology. His research focuses on (i) earthquake source studies, linking faults and inherited tectonic structures using geophysical techniques; (ii) site effect analysis using H/V spectral analysis of ambient noise recordings, and (iii) macroseismology, studying the relationship between shaking intensity distribution of felt earthquakes and local geology. Together with João Pacheco de Almeida (UCL), Koen tries to close the bridge between (macro)seismology and earthquake engineering.
More info on https://sites.google.com/site/koenvannoten/