A Preliminary Seismic Hazard Modelling in Northern Algeria

Abstract

It is established that seismic hazard evaluation, especially by analyzing the most energetic seismicity and its spatial distribution, provide critical information on earthquake-prone areas and their seismic potential. Therefore, during the last few years many efforts have been developed to improve our knowledge in Seismology and seismo-tectonic fields, especially with regard to the mitigation of the impact of destructive events and seismic risk assessment of populated urban areas. In this context, the EU-funded project “Improved Tools for Disaster Risk Mitigation in Algeria” (ITERATE) aims at seismic risk mitigation in Algeria, leading to updates in the seismic design regulations. This work, as a stage of the whole project, addressed a number of proposed developments and considerations made towards a further improvement of the component of seismic risk related to the probabilistic quantification of seismic hazard. Furthermore, and for some specific sites, Oran and Blida, a detailed probabilistic seismic hazard analysis was carried out. The obtained results were presented in terms of different ground motion parameters, i.e., PGA, spectral acceleration for different oscillation periods and uniform hazard spectra for different return periods. Moreover, a seismic disaggregation for different oscillation periods was performed to derive the contribution of the different seismic scenarios.