Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 1533–1555, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1533-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Contrasting seismic risk for Santiago, Chile, from near-field and distant earthquake sources Ekbal Hussain1,2, John R. Elliott1, Vitor Silva3, Mabé Vilar-Vega3, and Deborah Kane4 1COMET, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK 2British Geological Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Environmental Science Centre, Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK 3GEM Foundation, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy 4Risk Management Solutions, Inc., Newark, CA, USA Correspondence: Ekbal Hussain (
[email protected]) Received: 1 February 2019 – Discussion started: 11 March 2019 Revised: 20 March 2020 – Accepted: 29 March 2020 – Published: 29 May 2020 Abstract. More than half of all the people in the world now districts, such as Ñuñoa, Santiago, and Providencia, where live in dense urban centres. The rapid expansion of cities, targeted retrofitting campaigns would be most effective at particularly in low-income nations, has enabled the eco- reducing potential economic and human losses. Due to the nomic and social development of millions of people. How- potency of near-field earthquake sources demonstrated here, ever, many of these cities are located near active tectonic our work highlights the importance of also identifying and faults that have not produced an earthquake in recent mem- considering proximal minor active faults for cities in seismic ory, raising the risk of losing hard-earned progress through a zones globally in addition to the more major and distant large devastating earthquake.