Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Earthquakes often strike without warning. Current fault monitoring infrastructure is not sensitive enough to detect signals such as accelerating fault creep or dilation, which laboratory experiments and numerical models predict may precede large earthquakes. Here we argue that a paradigm shift is needed and technically achievable: from inferring faulting processes from a distance with surface arrays, to on-fault observatories (OFOs) that measure the processes directly on faults. And from accidental fault activation to controlled fault activation experiments. We discuss how the resulting observations could solve long-standing earthquake physics questions, and pave the way for more powerful earthquake risk mitigation strategies.
DOI: 10.31223/x5fj7m
Institutions: ETH Zurich, Swiss Seismological Service, Institute of Geophysics, Fraunhofer Research Institution for Energy Infrastructures and Geotechnologies IEG, RWTH Aachen University, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Stanford University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, The University of Tokyo, Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, Academia Sinica, University of California, Santa Cruz, Sapienza University of Rome
Language: English
Subfield: Geophysics
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7216210946