A panel of experts on the government's Central Disaster Prevention Council met Wednesday to examine a scenario in which an earthquake of magnitude 7 strikes the greater Tokyo metropolitan area.
The panel compiled for the first time a map simulating locations that could be hit by temblors of varying intensities, including an upper-6 on the 7-point Japanese intensity scale in Tokyo and three nearby prefectures and 7 in Tokyo's waterfront areas, government officials said.
It listed three possible types of massive earthquakes that could strike Tokyo: a magnitude 7.3 quake caused by a plate boundary, a quake of more than magnitude 7 caused by an active fault and a magnitude 6.9 quake with a shallow focus.