Scientists to map quake-prone Asian region

KUALA LUMPUR: An international team of scientists is set to begin a four-year project this month that will map, image and monitor an earthquake-prone area that encompasses some of the most remote and densely populated parts of Asia. The $7 million project is partly led by Michael Steckler, a professor at Columbia University´s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

It will involve three teams planting sophisticated global positioning system stations, and more than 100 seismometers that detect tremors in Bangladesh and western Myanmar, along the so-called IndoBurma subduction zone.

A team in India will also begin work in the part of the zone that extends into the northeastern part of that country. “This particular area has never been (mapped) before in anything close to this scale,” Steckler told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Thursday. “We know so little about what the geometry of the fault is under there that it is very hard to make accurate assessments.”

More than 30 researchers from at least six countries will create a detailed image of the onshore subduction zone, which is also home to the world´s largest delta system. It spans an area of about 700 km (435 miles) and is an extension of the zone that caused the tsunami of 2004 in the Indian Ocean, which killed more than 200,000 people. Any future earthquake in the research and surrounding areas could impact 140 million people - many of whom are among the world´s poorest - and cause the collapse of thousands badly maintained or constructed buildings, researchers said.