Assessing the risk associated with destructive, tsunamigenic earthquakes remains among the major scientific challenges, and a barrier to sustainable societies. Scientists already know that earthquakes are caused by the sluggish motions of tectonic plates. It is only since recently that it has been proposed that the opposite is also true: large earthquakes are capable of modifying tectonic plate motions. This opens to the notion of using tectonic plate motions to assess the seismic risk is tectonically-active regions. This research aims at making such a link for the largest and most destructive earthquake recorded in South America, along the Andean mountain belt, over the past fifty years: the 2010 magnitude 8.8 Maule, Chile event.
