Deterministic Seismic Hazard Analysis for the Northwestern Part of Haryana State, India, Considering Various Seismicity Levels

Abstract

This study quantifies seismic hazard using a deterministic framework for the northwestern part of India, where a new nuclear power plant (NPP) is going to be built in the near future. The region of interest is situated about 200 km from the Himalayan thrust, home of many great earthquakes including the 1897 Shillong, 1905 Kangra, 1934 Bihar–Nepal, 1950 Arunachal Pradesh, and 2011 Sikkim events. This region has also witnessed six intraplate earthquakes of magnitude greater than 6 in the past two centuries. Therefore, considering the past seismicity and importance of the facility, seismic investigation is performed in the seismic control region over a radius of 300 km from the boundary of the NPP to identify active faults and lineaments. Then the seismotectonic map is prepared by compiling the earthquake data of magnitude ≥ 3 and dividing the source region into regions I and II to represent the interplate and intraplate seismicity. Eight well-recognized attenuation models are considered to estimate the ground motion characteristics at the bedrock level. The captured earthquake hazard for three earthquake scenarios reveals different seismicity levels of sources from low to high using the logic tree approach. The developed hazard maps show spatial variation of 50th and 84th percentile peak ground acceleration (PGA) for three scenarios. The maximum PGA for the three respective scenarios is obtained as 0.088 g, 0.110 g, and 0.151 g. The corresponding deterministic response spectra are also presented for all cases, and the present hazard values are found to be higher than those quoted by previous researchers. The results obtained in this article will be very useful for preparing hazard index maps of the study area.