Rapid estimation of fault rupture extent using envelopes of acceleration

We present a new strategy to estimate the geometry of a rupture on a finite fault for rapid reporting of seismic intensity. We use envelope attenuation relationships which were presented by Huo et al. (Acta Seismol Sin 16:519-525, 1994). An important base of this work is the fault finiteness theory. We propose a new model to simulate high-frequency motions from earthquakes with large rupture dimension. The envelope of high-frequency ground motion from a large earthquake can be expressed as a root-mean-squared combination of envelope functions from smaller earthquakes. We use simulated envelopes of ground acceleration to estimate the direction and along-strike length of a rupture. Using the Wenchuan and Jiji (Chi-Chi) earthquake dataset, we parameterize the fault geometry with an epicenter, a fault strike, and along-strike rupture lengths. So this methodology seems quite appropriate for the rapid reporting systems of seismic intensity.