Local seismic hazard map based on the response spectra of stiff and very dense soils in Bengkulu city,Indonesia

It is well known that seismic hazard assessment should be implemented to design infrastructures in an earthquake-prone area such as Bengkulu.This paper presents local seismic hazard maps based on the response spectra of stiff and very dense soils in Bengkulu city,Indonesia.We collect the soil data and conduct the seismic wave propagation.The input motion for wave propagation analysis is generated from the spectral acceleration curves of stiff and dense soils.Various ground motion parameters such as peak ground acceleration,short-period and long-period spectral accelerations,and amplification factors are presented in microzonation maps.The results show that the peak ground acceleration in the study area ranges from 0.2 to 0.8 g,while the spectral acceleration varies between 0.5-1.5 g and 0.4-0.8 g for periods of 0.2 and 1 s,respectively.The amplification factor of the site is observed to vary from 0.5 to 1.6.Considering other spectral accelerations in Bengkulu,the spectral acceleration design shows a good performance.The results indicate the site characteristics of Bengkulu city,which can provide engineers with site class for structural building design.

Seismic Hazard Assessment for Japan after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Mega-Thrust Earthquake （Mw9.0）

The Tohoku-Oki earthquake （Mw 9.0） of March 11,2011, was the largest event in the history of Japan. This magnitude 9.0 mega-thrust earthquake initiated approximately 100 km off-shore of Miyagi prefecture and the rupture extended 400-500 km along the Pacific plate. Due to the strong ground motions and tsunami associated by this event, approximately twenty thousand people were killed or missing and more than 220 thousands houses and buildings were totally or partially destroyed. This mega-thrust earthquake was not considered in the national seismic hazard maps for Japan that was published by the HERP （headquarters for earthquake research promotion） of Japan. By comparing the results of the seismic hazard assessment and observed strong ground motions, we understand that the results of assessment were underestimated in Fukushima prefecture and northern part of Ibaraki prefecture. Its cause primarily lies in that it failed to evaluate the Mw 9.0 mega-thrust earthquake in the long-term evaluation for seismic activities. On the other hand, another cause is that we could not make the functional framework which is prepared for treatment of uncertainty for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment work fully. Based on the lessons learned from this earthquake disaster and the experience that we have engaged in the seismic hazard mapping project of Japan, we consider problems and issues to be resolved for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment and make new proposals to improve probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for Japan.

Mapping Seismic Hazard for Canadian Sites Using Spatially Smoothed Seismicity Model

The estimated seismic hazard based on the delineated seismic source model is used as the basis to assign the seismic design loads in Canadian structural design codes.An alternative for the estimation is based on a spatially smoothed source model.However,a quantification of differences in the Canadian seismic hazard maps(CanSHMs)obtained based on the delineated seismic source model and spatially smoothed model is unavailable.The quantification is valuable to identify epistemic uncertainty in the estimated seismic hazard and the degree of uncertainty in the CanSHMs.In the present study,we developed seismic source models using spatial smoothing and historical earthquake catalogue.We quantified the differences in the estimated Canadian seismic hazard by considering the delineated source model and spatially smoothed source models.For the development of the spatially smoothed seismic source models,we considered spatial kernel smoothing techniques with or without adaptive bandwidth.The results indicate that the use of the delineated seismic source model could lead to under or over-estimation of the seismic hazard as compared to those estimated based on spatially smoothed seismic source models.This suggests that an epistemic uncertainty caused by the seismic source models should be considered to map the seismic hazard.