Abstract: Hebei province is one of the most active areas of seismic activity in north and even east mainland China, there is complex tectonic background and fault development. Along with the development of the province’s 11 urban active fault detection and seismic risk evaluation project, some scientific projects and the accumulation of the fault structural study data, late Pleistocene fault data is further updated. Then, there is an important question of how to assess the maximum potential earthquake magnitude and the risk of these active faults on long-term earthquake prediction. Using the maximum potential earthquake magnitude assessment model proposed by Wen Xue-ze, we first divided fault cell to the active faults in Hebei region, then formed the empirical relationship between the maximum magnitudes M_max and the a_t/b values of the sub-areas' frequency-magnitude relationship in the Hebei area, and got the upper limit of the potential magnitude in fault cells by the formula. Furthermore, we calculated the seismogenic probability of partial fault area in the future strong earthquakes through the exponential relation with earthquake waiting time.

Key words: Active faults, Fault sub-area, G-R relationship, Maximum potential earthquake, Earthquake probability