Identification of Vrancea Earthquake Prone Zones Based on Seismic Energy Discontinuity Using Empirical Analysis and Analytical Tools

The need for evaluation of a sound earthquake disaster mitigation and critical assessment of the detailed cumulative seismic energy dissipated in the Vrancea Region in Romania is required to identify the active seismogenic activity for the last 12 years associated within the seismotectonic zone of Vrancea Region of Romania. The seismogenic behaviour observed by the recent strain energy release from 2004 to 2016 in Vrancea by processing the energy bulletin of the seismic energy discontinuity gives new results. Vrancea is the most critical seismo-tectonic region in Eastern Europe prone to earthquakes and suffer seismic energy variations that can be linearly approximated due to the constant rate of earthquake occurrences. This allows to forecast the magnitude using iso-contour plotting and analysis of the energy-magnitude relationship. The study shows that there is an immediate need to diagnose for a unifying slip-dependent law determined from strain energy bearing capacity of the region. In this study, the average moment release rate and strain release pattern within time frame 2004-2016 for the region have been examined by analysing the updated Romplus Catalog from the Vrancea region of Romania. The study shows that if strain energy released by a tectonic block is large it might affect the stress building process in the rocks of adjacent tectonic blocks. A zone of future earthquake activity in the Vrancea based on the study is also identified and an integrated functional block diagrams as part of the activity in any geo-tectonic region incorporating pre-earthquake parameter assessment is developed.