Assessment of the Seismic Hazards of the Marikina Valley Fault from 2019 M-w 6.1 Castillejos Earthquake and Historical Events

The 2019 M-w 6.1 Castillejos earthquake occurred in the Zambales range of the central Luzon Island in Philippines. No active fault was reported around the seismogenic zone according to previous investigations. This earthquake draws attention for assessment in seismic risk along the Marikina Valley fault system (MVFS) near the Manila dense metropolitan population. The Coulomb failure stress (CFS) change on the MVFS is estimated by the coseismic faulting model derived from the inversion of coseismic deformation field observed from the Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar using both the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 and Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The predicted CFS change is less than 0.5 kPa that implies insignificant Coulomb stress accumulation on the MVFS after the M-w 6.1 Castillejos event. However, the recorded 14 moderate and strong earthquakes in and around the Luzon islands caused significant CFS drop on the MVFS. This might delay the occurrence of the earthquake for 0.2-50 yr on the MVFS.