Seismic hazard maps for the central and eastern United States

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:549185

Frankel, A

The USGS is preparing new national seismic hazard maps depicting probabilistic ground motions from earthquakes. These maps show ground motions with a specified annual probability of being exceeded. Such hazard maps are the basis for design value maps used in building codes. For the eastern and central U.S., we have developed an approach that uses multiple models of seismic hazard. The first model is derived from a spatially-smoothed distribution of magnitude 3 and greater earthquakes in the historic catalog. This model also adds the hazard from characteristic large earthquakes, such as New Madrid Charleston, Wabash Valley and Charlevoix. The second model uses a spatially-smoothed distribution of magnitude 5 and greater events since 1700. This model accounts for the possibility of near-repeats of damaging earthquakes from localized seismogenic structures. The third model is a broad background zone to include the possibility of future earthquakes in areas that have been quiescent in historical times. The models can be combined into a single probabilistic ground-motion map for a given probability of exceedance. We compare the results of this simple approach at 30 nuclear power plant sites with those derived by the study of the Electric Power Research Institute, which used multiple source zone models chosen by several teams of experts. When the same attenuation curves are used for peak acceleration, the probabilities of exceedance and hazard curves derived by both methods show very good agreement.

• OSTI ID: 549185
• Report Number(s): CONF-950264--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
BUILDING CODES
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DATA ANALYSIS
EARTHQUAKES
GROUND MOTION
HAZARDS
MAPS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
PROBABILITY
SEISMICITY