Study of the Non-Uniform Distribution of Earthquake Risk Within Potential Sources

Potential sources are aggregates of probable future epicenters.In this area,for source models currently,in common use for seismic risk analysis in China,the mean area of each potential source is about 3000-4000 km2.It is assumed that seismic risk has a uniform distribution within the range of each potential source,but studies have shown that the uniform distribution model to a large extent may give an underestimation of the seismic risk.In this paper,the relative distribution of historical epicenters in space within potential sources is discussed,a method is proposed to quantitatively describe the non-uniform distribution of strong earthquakes within potential sources,and some preliminary results are given.By using the results of this paper,seismic risk analysis and seismic zonation can be made more scientific and more reasonable.