Los Angeles may be spared the horrific fate of the 'Great Incident' in San Andreas, according to a simulation.

Los Angeles is at risk of a major earthquake, but new research shows that tremors from a “big one” may not be as catastrophic as scientists initially feared.

A new simulation of the aftershocks from a 7.8-magnitude earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault suggests Los Angeles could see 50 percent less ground motion than previously expected.

This may be good news for the City of Angels, but residents (and builders) shouldn't let their guard down, researchers say — there are still many questions about the damage a major earthquake could cause in the region.

“This is just one scenario,” said study co-author and postdoctoral researcher Ti-Yang Yeh at San Diego State University.

The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it appears on the ESS Open Archive preprint site. The study updates computer modeling first conducted during the Great Southern California Earthquake of 2008, a project designed to measure the consequences of a magnitude 7.8 quake on the southern San Andreas Fault, which runs 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles.

According to the California Earthquake Center, such a worst-case earthquake is expected to kill 1,800 people, injure 50,000 others and cause losses estimated at $200 billion.

The ShakeOut model predicted dramatic, sudden ground movement in downtown Los Angeles, said Thomas Heaton, a professor emeritus of geophysics and mechanical and civil engineering at Caltech, who was not involved in the new study.

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“It caused a lot of buzz at the time, and then a number of us in the field wondered if the simulation was appropriate,” Heaton told Live Science. In particular, the simulation suggested that the basins surrounding the city — from the San Gabriel Basin where Pasadena is located to the Los Angeles Basin that houses the city of the same name — would act as what’s called a “waveguide,” directing earthquake waves directly toward the city. But Heaton said the basins are structurally complex, so it’s not clear whether they would be ideal channels.

The earthquake simulations used in the ShakeOut project weren’t as detailed as current technology allows, Yeh told Live Science. For example, the models represented the surface between the fault and Los Angeles as smooth. Yeh and Kim Olsen, a seismologist at San Diego State University who co-authored the study, used new simulations that included actual terrain as well as detailed information about the fault’s geometry and the way waves travel through the Earth’s interior.

The Carrizo Plains provide a good view of the San Andreas Fault in Southern California. (Photo credit: Kevin Schafer via Getty Images)

Their results showed better predictions for Los Angeles. “The ground motions are still profound, but not as terrifying as previously predicted,” Yeh said.

While the basins around Los Angeles do serve to direct earthquake waves to some extent, the researchers found that the mountainous terrain surrounding the fault also has a scattering effect. As a result, the waves entering the basins aren’t as strong as previously expected, and so the waves exiting them aren’t as strong either.

However, that doesn't mean Southern Californians can rest easy.

“It's important that they re-do these calculations, and I applaud them for doing so. That's how good science progresses,” Heaton said. “But the whole analysis still lacks real earthquake data.”

The area is now well monitored by a network of seismographs, but more earthquakes will need to occur to get those data points, Heaton said.

Another consideration is that ground motion can vary greatly even within the Los Angeles area, regardless of what the average shaking looks like for the entire city, said Zachary Ross, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new research.

The central Los Angeles basin sits on relatively loose sediments that could move easily in an earthquake, while areas closer to the mountains may have harder, more resistant rock, Ross said. There are also multiple other fault networks besides the San Andreas near Los Angeles, which create their own risks.

“That’s part of what makes this whole problem so difficult,” Ross told Live Science. “Ultimately, even if you can make this simulation somewhat plausible, it’s just one of them.”

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