The fourth working meeting of the research team of the DuFAULT project was held live on Wednesday 6 July 2022, starting at 11 o’clock, at the Geophysics Department, where the activities performed and plans for the rest of the project year were discussed.
The project manager, Josip Stipčević, started the meeting with a report on the evaluation of the first year of the project and achieved very good rating. He reminded that the project was presented at the scientific-expert meeting Seismic and climatic vulnerability of the Dubrovnik area, and the preliminary results were presented by Helena Latečki and Marin Sečanj at the EGU2022 conference held in Vienna.
Because on 22April 2022 a moderately strong earthquake occurred near Berković in Bosnia and Herzegovina, exactly in the DuFAULT project investigated area, part of the activities in the project were focused on that series of earthquakes and that area. The established Du-Net network enabled the detection of a large number of aftershocks, but due to its unfavourable geometric shape for the analysis of earthquakes especially in this area, another seismic station near Nevesinje was installed on 4 May 2022 to complete the existing network. Preliminary results of macroseismic research were also carried out and presented at the meeting, and a scientific article on the topic of this seismic series is being prepared.
Davorka Herak and Helena Latečki, who regularly and intensively work on locating earthquakes, presented what has been analyzed so far, with a special emphasis on the series of earthquakes near Berković. Marijan Herak briefly introduced us to the Croatian database of earthquake mechanisms, which he worked on and which will enable better quality future seismological and seismotectonic analyses.
At the beginning of May 2022, Bruno Tomljenović and Marin Sečanj carried out the first geological fieldwork in the area of Herzegovina and the Dubrovnik littoral. At the meeting, Marin Sečanj presented the results of the work on determining the structural model of the crust.
Finally, the plans for the second half of the project year were presented. Field trips are planned in Autumn: another geological field and the installation of two new seismic stations (on Mljet island and another location to be determined later). The analysis of the seismic noise will begin, and the work on the improvement of the 3D structural model and the simulation of the earthquake shaking scenario will continue. The tasks were divided among the members of the research team and the fourth working meeting was concluded.