Insight on seismic hazard studies for Egypt

Abstract

The seismic hazard studies for Egypt have been initiated a long time ago aiming to predict the ground motion parameters at different geographical scales; their review process had been routinely performed due to the increase of available instrumental observations rather than from methodological advances.For the comprehensive understanding of the development of seismic hazard assessment (SHA) studies in Egypt, we properly collect and test the existing SHA maps, computed at different geographic scales, against the available observations, data quality, physical assumptions and adopted methodology. Most of these SHA studies are probabilistic and the mapped ground motion acceleration values have been often largely exceeded by the observed values due to earthquakes occurred after their publication. For each study, we discuss and evaluate the input data, methodology and the results obtained in order to understand the reasons behind the bad performance of the available seismic hazard maps and to avoid such shortcomings in future seismic hazard assessment. Finally, we formulate suggestions that could be considered before new seismic hazard maps are released and then adopted, for the real benefit of society.