Kazuki Koketsu is a professor of applied seismology at the Earthquake Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, where he received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in geophysics. He has held the positions of research associate and associate professor at the Earthquake Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, and visiting fellow at the Research School of Earth Sciences of the Australian National University. His selected papers include Koketsu, K. and M. Kikuchi, Propagation of seismic ground motion in the Kanto basin, Japan, Science 288, 1237–1239 (2000); Yokota, Y. and K. Koketsu, A very long-term transient event preceding the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Nature Communications 6, doi:10.1038/ncomms6934 (2015); and Koketsu, K. et al., Widespread ground motion distribution caused by rupture directivity during the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake, Scientific Reports 6, doi:10.1038/srep28536 (2016).
He is a member of the Subcommittee for Evaluations of Strong Ground Motions, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Committee of Earthquake Insurance, Ministry of Finance of Japan; a representative of the Seismological Society of Japan; and the recipient of the 2016 Paper Award of the Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering. He was an associate editor of the Journal of Seismology (Springer) between 2005 and 2012.
This book explains the physics behind seismic ground motions and seismic waves to graduate and upper undergraduate students as well as to professionals. Both seismic ground motions and seismic waves are terms for “shaking” due to earthquakes, but it is common that shaking in the near-field of an earthquake source is called seismic ground motion and in the far-field is called seismic waves. Seismic ground motion is often described by the tensor formula based on the representation theorem, but in this book explicit formulation is emphasized beginning with Augustus Edward Hough Love (1863 – 1940). The book also explains in depth the equations and methods used for analysis and computation of shaking close to an earthquake source. In addition, it provides in detail information and knowledge related to teleseismic body waves, which are frequently used in the analysis of the source of an earthquake.