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The findings are based on a new earthquake risk assessment method.
The Pacific Ocean's volcanic 'Ring of Fire' could produce more earthquakes of magnitude 9 or greater, say researchers.
Their findings, reported in the
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, are based on a new way of calculating the probability of an earthquake.
The new research comes in the wake of the 2004 magnitude 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake which killed over 230,000 people across the Indian Ocean, and the 2011 magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan, claiming almost 19,000 lives.
"The strength of both these earthquakes caught many scientists by surprise," says the study's lead author Dr Yufang Rong, a seismologist with insurer FM Global.
"Almost all past methodologies failed to predict the strength of these earthquakes, so we looked at the problem again."
Existing methods of assessing earthquake risk are based on calculating how often earthquakes of a given magnitude happen along a particular fault line.
All these models are however tied to the limited histories available through earthquake records.
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