When does seismic hazard jump?

Practical seismic hazard assessment requires evalution of many uncertain parameters, such as b value, maximum magnitude, recurrence rate, etc. Often the evaluation of these parameters is modified by the addition of new seismological or geological data. It is important for decision makers to know when these modifications will cause a jump in the assessed hazard. The purpose of this note is to present a simple method for identifying critical regions in the space of parameters in which the hazard is substantially larger than the original reference assessment. -from Authors