scholarly journals Seismotectonic model and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for Papua New Guinea

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (15) ◽  
pp. 6571-6605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadi Ghasemi ◽  
Phil Cummins ◽  
Graeme Weatherill ◽  
Chris McKee ◽  
Martyn Hazelwood ◽  
...  

Abstract Papua New Guinea (PNG) lies in a belt of intense tectonic activity that experiences high levels of seismicity. Although this seismicity poses significant risks to society, the Building Code of PNG and its underpinning seismic loading requirements have not been revised since 1982. This study aims to partially address this gap by updating the seismic zoning map on which the earthquake loading component of the building code is based. We performed a new probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for PNG using the OpenQuake software developed by the Global Earthquake Model Foundation (Pagani et al. in Seism Res Lett 85(3):692–702, 2014). Among other enhancements, for the first time together with background sources, individual fault sources are implemented to represent active major and microplate boundaries in the region to better constrain the earthquake-rate and seismic-source models. The seismic-source model also models intraslab, Wadati–Benioff zone seismicity in a more realistic way using a continuous slab volume to constrain the finite ruptures of such events. The results suggest a high level of hazard in the coastal areas of the Huon Peninsula and the New Britain–Bougainville region, and a relatively low level of hazard in the southwestern part of mainland PNG. In comparison with the seismic zonation map in the current design standard, it can be noted that the spatial distribution of seismic hazard used for building design does not match the bedrock hazard distribution of this study. In particular, the high seismic hazard of the Huon Peninsula in the revised assessment is not captured in the current building code of PNG.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 743-753
Author(s):  
Yu-Sheng Sun ◽  
Hsien-Chi Li ◽  
Ling-Yun Chang ◽  
Zheng-Kai Ye ◽  
Chien-Chih Chen

Abstract. Real-time probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) was developed in this study in consideration of its practicability for daily life and the rate of seismic activity with time. Real-time PSHA follows the traditional PSHA framework, but the statistic occurrence rate is substituted by time-dependent seismic source probability. Over the last decade, the pattern informatics (PI) method has been developed as a time-dependent probability model of seismic source. We employed this method as a function of time-dependent seismic source probability, and we selected two major earthquakes in Taiwan as examples to explore real-time PSHA. These are the Meinong earthquake (ML 6.6) of 5 February 2016 and the Hualien earthquake (ML 6.2) of 6 February 2018. The seismic intensity maps produced by the real-time PSHA method facilitated the forecast of the maximum expected seismic intensity for the following 90 d. Compared with real ground motion data from the P-alert network, our seismic intensity forecasting maps showed considerable effectiveness. This result indicated that real-time PSHA is practicable and provides useful information that could be employed in the prevention of earthquake disasters.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Gülerce ◽  
Kadir Buğra Soyman ◽  
Barış Güner ◽  
Nuretdin Kaymakci

Abstract. This contribution provides an updated planar seismic source characterization (SSC) model to be used in the probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) for Istanbul. It defines planar rupture systems for the four main segments of North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) that are critical for the PSHA of Istanbul: segments covering the rupture zones of 1999 Kocaeli and Düzce earthquakes, Central Marmara, and Ganos/Saros segments. In each rupture system, the source geometry is defined in terms of fault length, fault width, fault plane attitude, and segmentation points. Activity rates and the magnitude recurrence models for each rupture system are established by considering geological and geodetic constraints and are tested based on the observed seismicity that associated with the rupture system. Uncertainty in the SSC model parameters (e.g. b-value, maximum magnitude, weights of the rupture scenarios) is considered in the logic tree. To acknowledge the effect of earthquakes that are not associated with the defined rupture systems on the hazard, a background zone is introduced and the seismicity rates in the background zone are calculated using smoothed-seismicity approach. The state-of-the-art SSC model presented here is the first fully-documented and ready-to-use fault-based SSC model developed for the PSHA of Istanbul.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 2365-2381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Gülerce ◽  
Kadir Buğra Soyman ◽  
Barış Güner ◽  
Nuretdin Kaymakci

Abstract. This contribution provides an updated planar seismic source characterization (SSC) model to be used in the probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) for Istanbul. It defines planar rupture systems for the four main segments of the North Anatolian fault zone (NAFZ) that are critical for the PSHA of Istanbul: segments covering the rupture zones of the 1999 Kocaeli and Düzce earthquakes, central Marmara, and Ganos/Saros segments. In each rupture system, the source geometry is defined in terms of fault length, fault width, fault plane attitude, and segmentation points. Activity rates and the magnitude recurrence models for each rupture system are established by considering geological and geodetic constraints and are tested based on the observed seismicity that is associated with the rupture system. Uncertainty in the SSC model parameters (e.g., b value, maximum magnitude, slip rate, weights of the rupture scenarios) is considered, whereas the uncertainty in the fault geometry is not included in the logic tree. To acknowledge the effect of earthquakes that are not associated with the defined rupture systems on the hazard, a background zone is introduced and the seismicity rates in the background zone are calculated using smoothed-seismicity approach. The state-of-the-art SSC model presented here is the first fully documented and ready-to-use fault-based SSC model developed for the PSHA of Istanbul.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Sheng Sun ◽  
Hsien-Chi Li ◽  
Ling-Yun Chang ◽  
Zheng-Kai Ye ◽  
Chien-Chih Chen

Abstract. The real-time Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) is developed for considering the practicability for daily life and the rate of seismic activity with time. The real-time PSHA follows the traditional PSHA framework, but the statistic occurrence rate is substituted by time-dependent seismic source probability. Pattern Informatics method (PI) is a proper time-dependent probability model of seismic source, which have been developed over a decade. Therefore, in this research, we chose the PI method as the function of time-dependent seismic source probability and selected two big earthquakes in Taiwan, the 2016/02/05, Meinong earthquake (ML 6.6) and the 2018/02/06, Hualien earthquake (ML 6.2), as examples for the real-time PSHA. The forecasting seismic intensity maps produced by the real-time PSHA present the maximum seismic intensity for the next 90 days. Compared to real ground motion data from the P-alert network, these forecasting seismic intensity maps have considerable effectiveness in forecasting. It indicates that the real-time PSHA is practicable and can provide a useful information for the prevention of earthquake disasters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 1172-1190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea L. Llenos ◽  
Andrew J. Michael

ABSTRACT We use an epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) based approach to develop a regionally optimized background earthquake rates from ETAS (ROBERE) method for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment. ROBERE fits parameters to the full seismicity catalog for a region with maximum-likelihood estimation, including uncertainty. It then averages the earthquake rates over a suite of catalogs from which foreshocks and aftershocks have been removed using stochastic declustering while maintaining the same Gaussian smoothing currently used for the U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). The NSHM currently determines these rates by smoothing a single catalog from which foreshocks and aftershocks have been removed using the method of Gardner and Knopoff (1974; hereafter, GK74). The parameters used in GK74 were determined from subjectively identified aftershock sequences, unlike ROBERE, in which both background rate and aftershock triggering parameters are objectively fitted. A major difference between the impacts of the two methods is GK74 significantly reduces the b-value, a critical value for seismic hazard analysis, whereas ROBERE maintains the original b-value from the full catalog. We apply these methods to the induced seismicity in Oklahoma and Kansas and tectonic activity in the San Francisco Bay Region. Using GK74 gives lower overall earthquake rates but estimates higher hazard due to the reduction in the b-value. ROBERE provides higher earthquake rates, at the magnitude of completeness, but lower hazard because it does not alter the b-value. We test two other declustering methods that produce results closer to ROBERE but do not use objectively fit parameters, include uncertainty, and may not work as well in other areas. We suggest adopting ROBERE for the NSHM so that our hazard estimates are based on an objective analysis, including uncertainty, and do not depend strongly on potentially biased b-values, which was never the goal of the existing methodology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Etoundi Delair Dieudonné Ndibi ◽  
Eddy Ferdinand Mbossi ◽  
Nguet Pauline Wokwenmendam ◽  
Bekoa Ateba ◽  
Théophile Ndougsa-Mbarga

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