Seismic asperities, as defined by the classic conceptual model of Lay and Kanamori (1981), are high-friction regions of a fault plane that are locked over the interseismic period and can suddenly slip during an earthquake, releasing the elastic strain accumulated around the fault. Asperities can be spatially limited by barriers, defined by Aki (1979) as geometric discontinuities and/or low friction areas segmenting the fault. After decades of research, there is now ample recognition that fault planes are formed by a heterogeneous distribution of asperities and barriers (e.g.
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