GLOBAL SEISMIC HAZARD ASSESSMENT BASED ON AREA SOURCE MODEL AND SEISMICITY DATA

A global seismic hazard assessment was conducted using the probabilist ic approach in conjunction with a modified means of evaluating the sei smicity parameters. The earthquake occurrence rate function was formul ated for area source cells from recent instrumental earthquake catalog s. For the statistical application of the G-R relation of each source cell, the upper- and lower-bound magnitudes were determined from, resp ectively, historical earthquake data using a Kernel smoothing operator and detection thresholds of recent catalogs. The seismic hazard at a particular site was obtained by integrating the hazard contribution fr om influencing cells, and the results were combined with the Poisson d istribution to obtain the seismic hazard in terms of the intensity at 10% probability of exceedance for the next 50 years. The seismic hazar d maps for three countries, constructed using the same method, agree w ell with the existing maps obtained by different methods. The method i s applicable to both oceanic and continental regions, and for any spec ific duration of time. It can be used for those regions without detail ed geological information or where the relation between existing fault s and earthquake occurrence is not clear.