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Reviewing the 1 March 1954 Adelaide Earthquake, South Australia

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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The 1 March 1954 earthquake in South Australia is the most damaging earthquake to impact the densely populated Adelaide region since European settlement. Previous interpretations have associated the event with the Eden-Burnside Fault zone, with a presumed epicentre near Darlington. Surprisingly, comparing macroseismic intensities from the 1954 earthquake with similar modern observational datasets suggests the 1954 event was perhaps larger than previously thought. We assess the validity of this observation by reviewing available macroseismic and instrumental data. We observe damaging shaking extending east from Adelaide into the Adelaide Hills, but without a well-defined locus of higher intensities. The limited teleseismic observations lead us to further speculate that the 1954 earthquake could have been deeper and/or associated with a higher-than-normal stress drop. These new findings question the conventionally assumed location for the 1954 earthquake. Our work highlights the potential seismic hazards faced by large urban centres in Australia such as Adelaide. This paper was presented to the 2022 Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) Conference 24-25 November (https://aees.org.au/aees-conference-2022/)

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Field Value
Title Reviewing the 1 March 1954 Adelaide Earthquake, South Australia
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/47e65aea-4e41-4396-ac74-5bbbc4b920a4
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 27/02/2023
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        132.0,
        -39.0
      ],
      [
        144.0,
        -39.0
      ],
      [
        144.0,
        -30.0
      ],
      [
        132.0,
        -30.0
      ],
      [
        132.0,
        -39.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Reviewing the 1 March 1954 Adelaide Earthquake, South Australia". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/reviewing-the-1-march-1954-adelaide-earthquake-south-australia