Interrelation among several important links in seismic risk analysis

Abstract

In order to further reveal the interrelation among division of seismic statistical regions, delimitation of potential seismic sources and estimation of seismicity parameters, we select 21 representative sites located in different places within the range of 100°∼120°E, 29°∼42°N to study the influences of seismicity parameter uncertainties of statistical regions on seismic risk estimations of these sites in the inhomogeneous and homogeneous distribution models. Combining the results from this study and previous ones, we can see that different schemes for dividing seismic statistical regions can change the seismic data in a statistical region. The uncertain data and additional uncertainty in selecting time intervals for seismic statistics will result in uncertainty of seismicity parameters estimation in a statistical region. For the homogeneous model, the larger the variation of this uncertainty is, the greater the uncertain influence on the seismic risk estimation of a site will be, which means that the division of seismic statistical regions makes a major contribution. In a seismic statistical region, the delimitation of potential sources and variant weight assignment of spatial distribution functions can raise the estimated values of ground motion parameters in the place where great earthquake might occur and its vicinity. In these places, the influence of uncertainty in potential source delimitation is very obvious, especially on the absolute magnitude of ground motion parameters (e.g., intensity), which means that the link of potential source delimitation makes a major effect. Generally speaking, the link of potential source delimitation affects mainly the sites located in the potential sources with the highest and second-high upper-limit earthquake magnitudes or in the vicinity of those with the highest upper-limit magnitude. While for the sites located in the potential sources with low upper-limit magnitudes, the uncertainty influence of statistical region division is larger than that of potential source delimitation.