Seismic hazard assessment and rheological implications: a case study selected for cities of Saudi Arabia along the easte
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Seismic hazard assessment and rheological implications: a case study selected for cities of Saudi Arabia along the eastern coast of Red Sea Faisal Rehman 1
&
Abdullah M. Alamri 2 & Sherif M. El-Hady 3,4 & Hussein M. Harbi 3 & Ali H. Atef 3
Received: 19 January 2017 / Accepted: 30 November 2017 / Published online: 19 December 2017 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2017
Abstract A probabilistic approach is used to evaluate the seismic hazard for 12 strategic cities in Saudi Arabia along the eastern coast of Red Sea. The focal depth variations controlled by rheological characteristics are taken into account for hazard calculations, and its creditability is tested through sensitivity analysis for hazard results. This study presents a neoprobabilistic seismic hazard assessment methodology in which the focal depth distribution of earthquakes within seismogenic layer is divided into three depth slices. These depth slices are based upon rheological characteristic of seismogenic layer. The hazard results are obtained using this depth-slice methodology and conventional approach in which uniform distribution of seismicity within seismogenic layer is assumed. The sensitivity analysis culminated in underestimation of hazard values in higher frequencies for uniform distribution of seismicity within seismogenic layer. Foregoing the observations recorded above, it can be concluded that the exploitation of depth-slices biased by the rheology to calculate hazard is relatively preferable in the situations demanding safety measures. Keywords Seismic hazard assessment . Rheological implications . Saudi Arabia
Introduction Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) is a quantified methodology which provides a relationship among potential seismic sources, corresponding ground motion parameters, and associated earthquake occurrence probabilities (Lin and Baker, 2011). PSHA reckons the
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-017-3325-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Faisal Rehman [email protected] 1
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan
2
Department of Geology & Geophysics, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia
3
Geophysics Department, Faculty of Earth Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
4
Earthquake Department, National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Helwan, Egypt
exceedance probability of ground motion from specified level at the site of interest by integrating the probability theory with prototype of seismological sources and ground motion attributes (Anbazhagan et al., 2009; Mihalić et al., 2011; Muço et al., 2012). For assessment of ground motion, we must take into account the earthquake occurrence frequency for various magnitudes, the ambiguity of the epicenter locations, and the attenuation of ground motion together with its uncertainty (Wong, and District, U.S.A.C.o.E.J., Corporation, U, 2004). Rheology i
