Abstract
Offshore wind has become a major contributor to reducing global carbon emissions. This paper presents a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm, which is located about 200 km north-east of England in the southern North Sea and will be one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world once completed. The seismic source characterization is composed of two areal seismic source models and four seismic source models derived using smoothed gridded seismicity with earthquake catalogue data processed by different techniques. The ground motion characterization contains eight ground motion models selected based on comparisons with regional data. The main findings are (1) the variation in seismic hazard across the site is negligible; (2) the main source controlling the hazard is the source that includes the 1931 Dogger Bank earthquake; (3) earthquake scenarios controlling the hazard are Mw = 5.0–6.3 and R = 110–210 km; and (4) the peak ground accelerations on rock are lower than for previous regional studies. These results could help guide future seismic hazard assessments in the North Sea.
Highlights
The Sofia Offshore Wind Farm is located about 200 km north-east of England in the southern North Sea (Figure 1)
Zones that begin with NOR are from Bungum et al [5] and the rest are from Musson and Sergeant [23], except NOR0
This study performed a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) for the center and all four corners of the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm
Summary
The Sofia Offshore Wind Farm is located about 200 km north-east of England in the southern North Sea (Figure 1). Other significant early seismic hazard studies including the project location are the reports by BGS & Ove Arup and Partners in 1997 [3], and the joint UK–Norwegian study by EQE International Ltd. and NORSAR in 2000 [4,5,6] These early studies were mainly motivated by the growing offshore oil and gas industry in the North Sea. a review study in 2003 [7] pointed out significant shortcomings with these reports such as a lack of transparency and detail in the methodology, limitations in the ground motion models used, and the fact that they only provide peak ground acceleration (PGA) values. Dogger Bank was submerged between 8000–5500 years ago due to rising sea levels following the last glacial period
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