Detection of a Buried Fault in Yuxi Basin Using ERT: Implications to New Urban Planning of Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, China

Abstract

Before a lot of old cities were planned and built, fault zones were not been taken into account. However it must be paid more attention in new urban planning because destructive earthquakes due to the activities of a fault may result in immeasurable losses. Therefore, the location of buried faults, especially in the near surface, is of considerable importance with respect to the new urban planning and disaster reduction. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), which can have an effective depth of investigation of several hundred meters, has been applied to the detection of buried faults in urban areas on the China mainland since 2001, and has proven to be one of the most powerful geophysical tools for this application. Here we inferred the presence, location and width of Pudu River fault zone in Yuxi basin using ERT, and then proposed our suggestions on the new urban planning of Yuxi city.