%0 Journal Article
%T Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis for Yemen
%A Rakesh Mohindra
%A Anand K. S. Nair
%A Sushil Gupta
%A Ujjwal Sur
%A Vladimir Sokolov
%J International Journal of Geophysics
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/304235
%X A stochastic-event probabilistic seismic hazard model, which can be used further for estimates of seismic loss and seismic risk analysis, has been developed for the territory of Yemen. An updated composite earthquake catalogue has been compiled using the databases from two basic sources and several research publications. The spatial distribution of earthquakes from the catalogue was used to define and characterize the regional earthquake source zones for Yemen. To capture all possible scenarios in the seismic hazard model, a stochastic event set has been created consisting of 15,986 events generated from 1,583 fault segments in the delineated seismic source zones. Distribution of horizontal peak ground acceleration (PGA) was calculated for all stochastic events considering epistemic uncertainty in ground-motion modeling using three suitable ground motion-prediction relationships, which were applied with equal weight. The probabilistic seismic hazard maps were created showing PGA and MSK seismic intensity at 10% and 50% probability of exceedance in 50 years, considering local soil site conditions. The resulting PGA for 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years (return period 475 years) ranges from 0.2£¿g to 0.3£¿g in western Yemen and generally is less than 0.05£¿g across central and eastern Yemen. The largest contributors to Yemen¡¯s seismic hazard are the events from the West Arabian Shield seismic zone. 1. Introduction The tectonic movement and interaction of the Arabian and the African plates constituting rifts of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are the principal cause of earthquakes in Yemen, which are known from historical sources over the last millenniums [1¨C3]. Earthquakes that affect Yemen are mainly associated with rifts of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden [4]. However, small- to moderate-sized earthquakes, which occur inside the Arabian Plate within 200 to 300£¿km of the axis of the Red Sea [5, 6], may also have some impact on the territory (Figure 1). Figure 1: Earthquake catalogue events from two sources (AMB: Ambraseys et al. [ 7] and ANSS: Advanced National Seismic System Worldwide catalogue) plotted over the generalized seismotectonic feature map. In general, seismic history of Yemen indicates the occurrence of large earthquakes with 20- to 30-year recurrence periods [2]. We can mention the Dhamar earthquake of 13 December 1982 ( ), which was felt over a large area and which killed and injured more than 15,000 people and destroyed about 1,500 settlements, as the deadliest earthquake of Yemen [8]. Two significant earthquakes occurred in 1941 and
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijge/2012/304235/