Seismic hazard from instrumentally recorded, historical and simulated earthquakes: Application to the Tibet–Himalayan region

Abstract

We present a new approach to assessment of regional seismic hazard, which accounts for observed (instrumentally recorded and historic) earthquakes, as well as for seismic events simulated for a significantly longer period of time than that of observations. We apply this approach to probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) for the Tibet–Himalayan region. The large magnitude synthetic events, which are consistent with the geophysical and geodetic data, together with the observed earthquakes are employed for the Monte-Carlo PSHA. Earthquake scenarios for hazard assessment are generated stochastically to sample the magnitude and spatial distribution of seismicity, as well as the distribution of ground motion for each seismic event. The peak ground acceleration values, which are estimated for the return period of 475yr, show that the hazard level associated with large events in the Tibet–Himalayan region significantly increases if the long record of simulated seismicity is considered in the PSHA. The magnitude and the source location of the 2008 Wenchuan M=7.9 earthquake are among the range of those described by the seismic source model accepted in our analysis. We analyze the relationship between the ground motion data obtained in the earthquake's epicentral area and the obtained PSHA estimations using a deaggregation technique. The proposed approach provides a better understanding of ground shaking due to possible large-magnitude events and could be useful for risk assessment, earthquake engineering purposes, and emergency planning.