First level seismic microzonation map of Al-Madinah province, western Saudi Arabia using the geographic information system approach

Abstract

The identification of natural hazard prone areas for future planning requires an efficient decision support tool to provide the appropriate weights for the various topographical, geological, and seismological factors responsible for the expected hazards. In the present study, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) with six earthquake hazard parameters (EHPs) was used as a decision support system for the identification of earthquake triggered hazards in the Al-Madinah region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The pairwise comparison matrix and the final weights for all the EHPs during the implementation of AHP were calculated with an acceptable limit of consistency ratio. A GIS-based integrated analysis was carried out on all the selected attributes to generate the final hazard and microzonation map. From the analysis, it was observed that 15 % of the region fall under a very high or high hazard category. The very high seismic hazard zone is located in the northwestern region of Al-Madinah province, while the eastern and southern regions show low to very low hazard. The result of the study may be used as a first-level hazard and reliability map in selecting the appropriate earthquake resistant sites in designing the forthcoming new buildings against the potential seismic hazard of the province.