Mapping an aquitard breach using shear-wave seismic reflection

In multi-layered hydrostratigraphic systems, aquitard breaches caused by faulting or paleo-erosion can allow substantial quantities of water of differing quality to be exchanged between aquifers. Seismic reflection technology was used to map the extent and orientation of an aquitard breach connecting a shallow alluvial aquifer to the deeper semi-confined Memphis aquifer in southwestern Tennessee, USA. Geophysical well logs indicate the presence of the aquitard at borehole locations that define the beginning and end points on two seismic survey lines, which intersect at a borehole where the aquitard is absent. A SE–NW-oriented paleochannel, 350 m wide and approximately 35–40 m deep, is interpreted from the seismic reflection surveys. The paleochannel cuts through the aquitard and into the upper part of the Memphis aquifer, thus creating a hydraulic connection between the shallow unconfined and deeper, semi-confined aquifers. The results indicate the potential of the shear-wave seismic reflection methods to resolve shallow breaches through fine-grained aquitards given availability of sufficient well control.     

考虑地震危险性的倾倒变形边坡风险定量分析

风险分析与评估是解决边坡固有不确定性的重要工具,但同时考虑外在荷载和内在岩土力学参数的不确定性,对边坡进行系统定量风险分析的研究较少.以西藏扎拉水电站厂后倾倒变形边坡为例,基于场地地震峰值加速度概率密度函数和不同地震峰值加速度下边坡失稳概率拟合函数,采用数值积分计算了边坡在设计基准期的失稳概率,并采用离散元方法对边坡失...     

Active faults of the northern Tien Shan: tectonophysical zoning of seismic risk

This study continues the work by Mikhail Gzovsky on geological (tectonophysical) criteria for seismic risk. It is suggested to perform seismic-risk zoning according to parameters of normal and shear stresses on fault planes converted from results of tectonophysical stress reconstructions. The approach requires the knowledge of both dip and strike of the respective fault segments. Slip geometry is estimated from stress tensor, assuming that it is directed along shear stress. The suggested approach is applied to faults in the northern Tien Shan, and the current stress parameters are reconstructed using source mechanisms of catalogued earthquakes recorded by the KNET seismological network of the RAS Science Station in Bishkek. Stress modeling is performed by the method of cataclastic analysis providing constraints on stress ellipsoids, as well as on relations between the spherical and deviatoric components of the stress tensor. Plotted on the Mohr diagram, the fault stress points allow estimating whether the respective fault segments are close to the critical state (brittle failure). The suggested seismic-risk zoning of faults in the northern Tien Shan reveals up to 25 km long hazardous fault segments.     

Mapping the top of the permafrost using surface direct current resistivity survey

 Data from a direct current resistivity survey and geologic logs from boreholes were used to map the top of permafrost at a remote air force installation in Alaska. This study resulted from a remedial investigation that was conducted at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) regulations. The depth and continuity of the permafrost was important in determining the fate of petroleum contamination that was inadvertently discharged to the ground during earlier air force operations. The results indicate that the top of permafrost forms a highly irregular surface. In general, however, the top of permafrost forms a diagonal ridge at the center of the contour grid that is bordered on each side by troughs. Received: 21 November 1995 · Accepted: 5 March 1996     

Data concerning seismic risk evaluation in Romania

In this paper some results are presented of the researches performed in two main directions: (1) the geologic hazard assessment in the extra-Carpathian territory and (2) the estimation of the degree of exposure of the population to this hazard. For the evaluation of the geologic hazard, data regarding the seismic history of the extra-Carpathian territory (only the intermediate depth Vrancea earthquakes were analyzed) and the recent geodynamical processes which can be triggered or amplified by seismic vibrations, were used. These data published in two previous papers, have been reevaluated and are present in a unitary form, allowing for the separation into zones with different degrees of geological hazard in the analyzed territory. The data regarding the number, space distribution, and density of the population has made it possible to estimate the number of people living in each zone.Paper presented at the 21st General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission held in Sofia, 1988.     

Stochastic finite element calculation of seismic risk

The probable locations and the times of occurrence of earthquakes can be suggested if a reasonably accurate finite element model of the area is available. This can be done by determining the unstable regions of the model and studying their evolution in time. Instability of a particular area depends on how close such a region is to a limiting strength and this closeness can be interpreted statistically.     

Mapping sediment thickness of Islamabad city using empirical relationships: Implications for seismic hazard assessment

Soft sediments make an important component of the subsurface lithology, especially in areas underlain by river/stream basins. Occupying a position directly above the bedrock up to the land surface, these soft sediments can range in thickness from few centimeters to hundreds of meters. They carry a special nuisance in seismic hazards, as they serve as a source of seismic amplification that may enhance the seismic shaking of many folds. Determination of the thickness of the soft sediments is therefore crucial in seismic hazard analysis. A number of studies in recent years have demonstrated that frequency and amplitude spectrum obtained from the noise measurements during the recording of natural seismicity can be used to obtain thickness of soft sediments covering the bedrock. Nakamura (1989) presented a technique to determine such spectrum using ratio of horizontal to vertical components of the Rayleigh waves. The present study is based on an extensive set of microtremor measurements carried out in the Islamabad city, Pakistan. Fundamental frequencies were obtained from weak motion sensors and Tromino Engy Plus instruments to show that the correlation is clearly valid for a wide range of sediment thickness. A simple formula was derived for the investigated area to determine directly the thickness of sediments from the main peaks in the H/V spectrum for seismometer and Tromino data separately. A comparison is made between sediment thicknesses derived from empirical relations developed in this study with those given in literature to demonstrate a positive correlation. The correlation of instrumental resonant frequencies with calculated resonant frequencies (theoretical) suggests that the relation derived from the noise measurements mostly depends on the velocity depth function of the shear wave. The fundamental frequency of the main peak of spectral ratio of H/V using the both instruments correlates well with the thickness of sediments at the site obtained from the borehole data. It is found out that there is a wide variation in soft-sediment thickness in the Islamabad area, but as a general rule, soft sediments are thicker adjacent to stream courses compared to the areas intervening the streams. The distribution of sediments in the studied area is illustrated by means of cross sections constructed from results of the microtremor analyses and available borehole data, which provides a visual distribution of the soft sediments underlying the Islamabad city.     

Best practices in risk and crisis communication: Implications for natural hazards management

As societies evolve, often the most appropriate response to the hazard must also evolve. However, such shifts in appropriate response to a hazard, whether at the individual or at the societal level, are rarely straightforward: Closing the gap between desired practice and current practice requires effective communication. Although there is a significant literature on how to encourage adaptation before an event and how to communicate during an event, there is less work tying the two together or on how to communicate shifts in larger scale societal response to a natural hazard. In this article, we bring together the best practices and theoretical literature from risk communication and crisis communication and empirical literature on wildfire communication to derive the key characteristics associated with best communication practices. We then use this framework on three case studies of wildfires in California, Montana, and Wyoming, each of which used a different strategy for managing the fire, to understand whether approaching communication more holistically can lead to more desired natural hazard management outcomes. Our working hypothesis was as follows: effective communication before and during a fire would be associated with acceptance of more flexible fire management strategies. The findings indicate how a type of desired management change (more flexible fire management) is associated with more effective communication practices before and during the event.     

地震危险性、地震危害性和地震易损性

做好城市防震减灾工作 ,关键是对未来可能遭遇地震灾害定量化预测。本文论述地震灾害定量化的三要素 :地震危险性 ,地震危害性和地震易损性 ,它们概念完全不同 ,且很容易混淆 ,但又存在因与果的关系。本文还简要介绍厦门市地震科技工作者开展的“闽南地区综合防震减灾示范工程”。     

Flow-based seismic risk assessment of a water transmission network employing probabilistic seismic hazard analysis

Natural Hazards - In this study, a seismic risk assessment model was proposed to evaluate the seismic reliability of a water transmission network. The proposed risk assessment model involves...     

Considering large earthquake clustering in seismic risk analysis

Earthquakes cluster in space and time resulting in nonlinear damage effects. We compute earthquake interactions using the Coulomb stress transfer theory and dynamic vulnerability from the concept of ductility capacity reduction. We combine both processes in the generic multi-risk framework where risk scenarios are simulated using a variant of the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. We apply the proposed approach to the thrust fault system of northern Italy, considering earthquakes with characteristic magnitudes in the range ~[6, 6.5], different levels of tectonic loading \(\dot{\tau }\) = {10⁻⁴, 10⁻³, 10⁻²} bar/year and a generic stock of fictitious low-rise buildings with different ductility capacities μ _Δ = {2, 4, 6}. We describe the process’ stochasticity by non-stationary Poisson earthquake probabilities and by binomial damage state probabilities. We find that earthquake clustering yields a tail fattening of the seismic risk curve, the effect of which is amplified by damage-dependent fragility due to clustering. The impact of clustering alone is in average more important than dynamic vulnerability, the spatial extent of the former phenomenon being greater than of the latter one.

     

Considering large earthquake clustering in seismic risk analysis

Earthquakes cluster in space and time resulting in nonlinear damage effects. We compute earthquake interactions using the Coulomb stress transfer theory and dynamic vulnerability from the concept of ductility capacity reduction. We combine both processes in the generic multi-risk framework where risk scenarios are simulated using a variant of the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. We apply the proposed approach to the thrust fault system of northern Italy, considering earthquakes with characteristic magnitudes in the range ~[6, 6.5], different levels of tectonic loading \(\dot{\tau }\) = {10^?4, 10^?3, 10^?2} bar/year and a generic stock of fictitious low-rise buildings with different ductility capacities μ _Δ = {2, 4, 6}. We describe the process’ stochasticity by non-stationary Poisson earthquake probabilities and by binomial damage state probabilities. We find that earthquake clustering yields a tail fattening of the seismic risk curve, the effect of which is amplified by damage-dependent fragility due to clustering. The impact of clustering alone is in average more important than dynamic vulnerability, the spatial extent of the former phenomenon being greater than of the latter one.     

海原-六盘山断裂带现今地震危险性的数值模拟分析

基于正交各向异性理论表征断层的变形行为,将平行断层面的剪切模量和周围介质剪切模量的比值作为反演参数,以海原-六盘山断裂附近现今GPS观测地壳水平运动速度场作为约束,通过构建三维有限元模型,采用遗传算法,反演了海原-六盘山断裂平行断层面的剪切模量分布.结果显示:六盘山断裂中南段平行断层面剪切模量与周围介质接近,且沿断层面...     

Assessment of seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest,Romania

In this paper, seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, are proposed and assessed. Bucharest has one of the highest seismic risk levels in Europe, and this is due to a combination of relatively high seismic hazard and a building stock built mainly before the devastating Vrancea 1977 earthquake. In this study, the seismic risk of Bucharest is assessed using the most recent information regarding the characteristics of the residential building stock. The ground motion amplitudes are evaluated starting from random fields obtained by coupling a ground motion model derived for the Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic source with a spatial correlation model. The seismic risk evaluation method applied in this study is based on the well-known macroseismic method. For several structural typologies, the vulnerability parameters are evaluated based on a damage survey performed on 18,000 buildings in Bucharest after the March 1977 earthquake. Subsequently, the risk metrics are compared with those from other studies in the literature that apply a different risk assessment methodology in order to gain a better view of the uncertainties associated with a seismic risk study at city level. Finally, the impact of several Vrancea intermediate-depth earthquake scenarios is evaluated and the results show that the earthquake which has the closest epicenter to Bucharest appears to be the most damaging.

     

Assessment of seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest,Romania

In this paper, seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, are proposed and assessed. Bucharest has one of the highest seismic risk levels in Europe, and this is due to a combination of relatively high seismic hazard and a building stock built mainly before the devastating Vrancea 1977 earthquake. In this study, the seismic risk of Bucharest is assessed using the most recent information regarding the characteristics of the residential building stock. The ground motion amplitudes are evaluated starting from random fields obtained by coupling a ground motion model derived for the Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic source with a spatial correlation model. The seismic risk evaluation method applied in this study is based on the well-known macroseismic method. For several structural typologies, the vulnerability parameters are evaluated based on a damage survey performed on 18,000 buildings in Bucharest after the March 1977 earthquake. Subsequently, the risk metrics are compared with those from other studies in the literature that apply a different risk assessment methodology in order to gain a better view of the uncertainties associated with a seismic risk study at city level. Finally, the impact of several Vrancea intermediate-depth earthquake scenarios is evaluated and the results show that the earthquake which has the closest epicenter to Bucharest appears to be the most damaging.     

Robustness of the holistic seismic risk evaluation in urban centers using the USRi

The Urban Seismic Risk index (USRi) published in a previous article (Carreño et al., Nat Hazards 40:137–172, 2007) is a composite indicator that measures risk from an integrated perspective and guides decision-making for identifying the main interdisciplinary factors of vulnerability to be reduced or intervened. The first step of the method is the evaluation of the potential physical damage (hard approach) as a result of the convolution of the seismic hazard with the physical vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure. Subsequently, a set of social context conditions that aggravate the physical effects is also considered (soft approach). According to this procedure, the physical risk index is evaluated for each unit of analysis from existing loss scenarios, whereas the total risk index is obtained by multiplying the former index by an impact factor using an aggravating coefficient, based on variables associated with the socio-economic conditions of each unit of analysis. The USRi has been developed using the underlying holistic and multi-hazard approach of the Urban Risk Index framework proposed for the evaluation of disaster risk in different megacities worldwide. This article presents the sensitivity analysis of the index to different parameters such as input data, weights and transformation functions used for the scaling or normalization of variables. This analysis has been performed using the Monte Carlo simulation to validate the robustness of this composite indicator, understanding as robustness how the cities maintain the ranking as well as predefined risk level ranges, when compared with the deterministic results of risk. Results are shown for different cities of the world.     

Patterns and trends in the perception of seismic risk. Case study: Bucharest Municipality/Romania

This research looks at the very nature of perception of seismic risk, an issue that is not only academically important, but also it can save lives and reduce injury and community costs. The background idea is that citizens in big cities, vulnerable to seismic hazard are living with latent and permanent concerns about a possible earthquake. We were interested in revealing significant aspects of Bucharest citizens’ orientations and tendencies in relation to the possible seismic event. Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is exposed to the greatest seismic hazard compared with other European capitals. The dimensions of study were: the anticipations of seism occurrence, the behavior during the event, evaluations of consequences, support factors, and individual vulnerability. This article is an example of the low cost approach on a sample of 190 citizens, understood as an exercise in attempting to relate population characteristics to various aspects of risk perception. The methodology used was based on a field investigation, where the research agents’ applied one questionnaire containing free/post codified/fan answers concerning: demographic variables, the buildings’ features, and perceptions about the possible earthquake event. The findings of this study showed that the hazard perception significantly associates with aspects concerning the subjects’ orientation toward institutional factors/human relations/negativism, and toward financial/material/moral support in case of disaster etc. It is hoped that this issue will serve to inspire further investigations into this very important and socially sensitive field, due to the fact that hazard analysis and mitigation would be more effective when it takes into account the human dimension of disasters.     

Social vulnerability and seismic risk perception. Case study: the historic center of the Bucharest Municipality/Romania

Social vulnerability is as much a part of risk as building damage, hazard magnitude, and economic loss. Social vulnerability refers to the capacity of a human community exposed during the impact of a natural hazard event (in this case, an earthquake) to resist, cope with, and recover from that impact. In the perspective of the 3rd millennium, we come to understand that the most efficient and accessible way to reduce the pressure of natural risks is to reduce the vulnerability level of the human communities exposed to that certain hazard. This study aims to test, in an exposed and vulnerable area, the relationship between social vulnerability and the perception of the seismic risk. The research focuses only on the first level of social vulnerability, defined as the ability of an individual within a household to recover from a natural hazard impact (Dwyer et al. 2004). A prevailing assumption was that social vulnerability influences the level of perception of the seismic risk, in an exposed, vulnerable area. To this end, two samples were used, different under the aspect of social vulnerability, in the context of the same residential area. Social vulnerability was computed as a normalized composed index that includes the poverty ratio and the demographic vulnerability ratio (depending on the age, gender, and education level indicators). The statistical processing has indicated a significant difference in the high perception level for the two samples that were compared, in the sense that in the context of an increased level of social vulnerability, people generally better acknowledge the seismic risk.

The role of friction in the seismic risk mitigation of freestanding art objects

The problem of reducing the seismic risk for art objects, that are the objects generally contained within Museums, is of great interest. The first studies were performed in Japan and were successively organized in a general framework by a research program performed at Southern California University and sponsored by the Getty Museum at Malibu, California. In these papers and in the following Italian studies, the theoretical models for the problem concerning vases and statues are based on the dynamic behavior of rigid blocks and have been deeply developed. Unfortunately, because of the great lack of experimental data, determinant parameters for the problem characterization (like the friction between two superimposed blocks or between the art object and the support plane) are often assumed without reference to real values derived from laboratory tests. This paper presents the results of a research program containing the experimental determination of the friction coefficient between the art object and the support (by means of a testing apparatus on purpose realized) together with dynamic tests performed on simple-shaped objects made of different materials. The dynamic tests were performed using an unidirectional shaking table and different supporting surfaces, so that the influence of different friction coefficients has been analyzed.