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Research summary

According to the World Health Organization, earthquakes caused nearly 750,000 deaths globally from 1998 to 2017-more than half of the deaths caused by all natural disasters. To become more resilient to earthquakes, we need to identify the faults that are capable of generating them and determine the frequencies and magnitudes at which they fail.

As Canada Research Chair in Geophysics, Dr. Edwin Nissen seeks to better understand earthquake behaviour within and around British Columbia. He and his research team are using innovative measurements from the fields of earthquake geodesy (the study of how the Earth deforms during and between earthquakes) and tectonic geomorphology (the study of how the Earth’s surface topography evolves over many earthquake cycles). Given that geologists predict a massive earthquake will strike British Columbia in the coming years, Nissen’s findings could provide the knowledge we need to be better prepared.