Past, Present and Future Passive Seismic Tasks for Sustainable Development

Seismic hazard increases every year as economic assimilation of earthquake-prone areas is going on. It is also aggravated by uncontrolled human impact on the Earth’s lithospheric shell (extraction of oil and gas, as well as of other mineral resources, construction of large hydro technical structures, burial of industrial waste and so on). Higher seismic risk is also caused by setting up atomic power plants and other ecologically hazardous facilities in earthquake-prone regions, because even insignificant earthquakes and the associated secondary damaging factors (landslides, rock falls, ground breakage and so on) can disrupt their normal operation. The problem of providing seismic safety is thus a complex one, demanding interdepartmental solutions and coordination, the estimation and forecast of, not only direct, but also of consequential loss implementation of a great number of multi-level tasks using passive seismic methods.