Best Practices in Physics-based Fault Rupture Models for Seismic Hazard Assessment of Nuclear Installations: Issues and Challenges Towards Full Seismic Risk Analysis LUIS A. DALGUER, 1,3 YOSHIMITSU FUKUSHIMA, 2 KOJIRO IRIKURA, 3 CHANGJIANG WU, 4 and PHILIPPE RENAULT 5 Abstract—In recent years the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been closely following and supporting the use of physics-based rupture models for ground motion prediction (e.g. IAEA Safety Standards Series No. SSG–9 and Safety Report Series No. 85) as well as for fault displacement prediction (IAEA-TEC- DOC, in preparation), respectively for applications in Seismic Hazard Analysis (SHA) and Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis (FDHA) for nuclear installations. Further strengthening of this effort and dissemination in practices for SHA, FDHA and engi- neering issues have been done through different international working group activities, being the most outstanding two interna- tional workshops on Best Practices in Physics-based Fault Rupture Models for Seismic Hazard Assessment of Nuclear Installations (BestPSHANI) in 2015 and 2018. A PAGEOPH topical volume for the BestPSHANI 2015 was published in Dalguer et al. (Pure Appl Geophys 174:3325–3329, 2017). Now, in this PAGEOPH topical volume we collect several articles from the BestPSHANI 2018 workshop as well as several new contributions. The issue also covers further topics on the assessments of engineering issues that rely on ground motion estimates for the evaluation of structures oriented to full seismic risk analysis. A total of twenty-nine papers have been selected covering topics ranging from the seismological aspects of earthquake source studies, ground motion and fault displacement modeling to the engineering application of simulated ground motion for the analysis of soil structure interaction, struc- tural response and fragility curve analysis for the quantification of seismic vulnerability of structures and their seismic performance. Collectively, the seismological papers discuss several current issues of source characterization and ground motion prediction for SHA, highlighting the usefulness of physics-based models for future applications in practice. The engineering papers describe methodologies to develop integral models from source-to-struc- tures that consider the developments of synthetic seismograms as input for structural response and fragility curves estimation for seismic vulnerability assessment. Therefore, this issue contents advanced seismological and engineering resources that might be useful to scientists, engineers, students and practitioners involved in all aspects of SHA, FDHA and vulnerability analysis of engi- neering structures for seismic risk. Keywords: Physics-based fault rupture models, dynamic rupture, kinematic rupture, broadband ground motion, near-source ground motion, fault displacement, stochastic modeling, empirical green’s functions, source inversion, seismic hazard assessments, probabilistic and deterministic approaches, uncertainties quantifi- cation, structural response, fragility curves, response spectrum, seismic risk. 1. Introduction After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, the reliable quantifica- tion of ground motion near the source and fault displacement caused by surface rupture have been of serious concern for site-specific Seismic Hazard Analysis (SHA) and Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis (FDHA) for nuclear installations. The gen- eral recommendation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to conduct an adequate process of site evaluation and periodical safety reviews of SHA and FDHA following the state-of- the-art in science, technology and practices. Site- specific studies of SHA and FDHA are required to be done considering details of best available information of region-specific geology, site and seismic sources; as such, reliable non-ergodic models are needed, that is in contrary to engineering practice, which uses empirical ergodic models based on global datasets that do not necessarily cover the whole range of interest. The development of reliable empirical models to predict fault displacement and near-source ground motion based on observations from a site- specific region is up to date limited because of the sparseness of observed data. Due to this issue, there is 1 3Q-Lab GmbH, 8106 Adlikon, Switzerland. E-mail: luis.dalguer@alumni.ethz.ch 2 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, Austria. 3 Aichi Institute of Technology, Toyota, Japan. 4 Nuclear Regulation Authority, Tokyo, Japan. 5 Swissnuclear, Olten, Switzerland. Pure Appl. Geophys. 177 (2020), 1845–1853 Ó 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-020-02497-x Pure and Applied Geophysics