Fault Geometry at the Rupture Termination of the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu Earthquake

The source geometry and slip distribution at rupture termination of the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake were investigated using waveform inversion on the assumption of fault branching in the northeastern part of the rupture model. Possible branching of the Okamoto fault is suggested both by the static-displacement distribution and damage extension east of Kobe (Nishinomiya area). To exclude data contaminated by the basin-edge-diffracted wave in the waveform-inversion process, we examined the spatio-temporal variation of its influence and from a comparison with a flat model, we determined windows appropriate for the data. Three subevents were identified, as was reported in previous works. The largest was in the shallow part on the Awaji side, whereas the smaller two occurred at great depths (7km) on the Kobe side. We found a smaller subevent in the deep part of the branch. Total variance reduction was larger, and the ABIC value was smaller when we assumed the branch than when we did not, which shows the superiority of the branching fault model. Resolution checks showed that the slips on proposed branched portions are physical and not caused by random-data noise or systematic errors in Green’s func-