Stochastic modeling of Iranian earthquakes and estimation of ground motion for future earthquakes in Greater Tehran

Strong-motion data from eight significant well-documented earthquakes in Iran have been simulated using a stochastic modeling technique for finite faults proposed by Beresnev and Atkinson [Bull Seismol Soc Am 87 (1997) 67–84; Seism Res Lett 69 (1998) 27–32]. The database consists of 61 three-component records from eight earthquakes of magnitude ranging from M 6.3 to M 7.4, recorded at hypocentral distances up to 200 km. The model predictions are in good agreement with available Iranian strong-motion data as evidenced by near-zero average of differences between logarithms of the observed and predicted values for all frequencies. The strength factor, sfact, a quantity that controls the high-frequency radiation from the source is determined, on an event-by-event basis, by fitting simulated to observed response spectra.     

Analysis of Pore Pressure and Stress Distribution around a Wellbore Drilled in Chemically Active Elastoplastic Formations

Drilling in low-permeable reactive shale formations with water-based drilling mud presents significant challenges, particularly in high-pressure and high-temperature environments. In previous studies, several models were proposed to describe the thermodynamic behaviour of shale. Most shale formations under high pressure are expected to undergo plastic deformation. An innovative algorithm including work hardening is proposed in the framework of thermo-chemo-poroelasticity to investigate the effect of plasticity on stresses around the wellbore. For this purpose a finite-element model of coupled thermo-chemo-poro-elastoplasticity is developed. The governing equations are based on the concept of thermodynamics of irreversible processes in discontinuous systems. In order to solve the plastic problem, a single-step backward Euler algorithm containing a yield surface-correction scheme is used to integrate the plastic stress–strain relation. An initial stress method is employed to solve the non-linearity of the plastic equation. In addition, super convergent patch recovery is used to accurately evaluate the time-dependent stress tensor from nodal displacement. The results of this study reveal that thermal and chemical osmosis can significantly affect the fluid flow in low-permeable shale formations. When the salinity of drilling mud is higher than that of pore fluid, fluid is pulled out of the formation by chemical osmotic back flow. Similar results are observed when the temperature of drilling mud is lower than that of the formation fluid. It is found that linear elastic approaches to wellbore stability analysis appear to overestimate the tangential stress around the wellbore and produce more conservative stresses compared to the results of field observation. Therefore, the drilling mud properties obtained from the elastoplastic wellbore stability in shales provide a safer mud weight window and reduce drilling cost.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping using machine learning algorithms and comparison of their performance at Abha Basin,Asir Region,Saudi Arabia

The current study aimed at evaluating the capabilities of seven advanced machine learning techniques(MLTs),including,Support Vector Machine(SVM),Random Forest(RF),Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline(MARS),Artificial Neural Network(ANN),Quadratic Discriminant Analysis(QDA),Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA),and Naive Bayes(NB),for landslide susceptibility modeling and comparison of their performances.Coupling machine learning algorithms with spatial data types for landslide susceptibility mapping is a vitally important issue.This study was carried out using GIS and R open source software at Abha Basin,Asir Region,Saudi Arabia.First,a total of 243 landslide locations were identified at Abha Basin to prepare the landslide inventory map using different data sources.All the landslide areas were randomly separated into two groups with a ratio of 70%for training and 30%for validating purposes.Twelve landslide-variables were generated for landslide susceptibility modeling,which include altitude,lithology,distance to faults,normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI),landuse/landcover(LULC),distance to roads,slope angle,distance to streams,profile curvature,plan curvature,slope length(LS),and slope-aspect.The area under curve(AUC-ROC)approach has been applied to evaluate,validate,and compare the MLTs performance.The results indicated that AUC values for seven MLTs range from 89.0%for QDA to 95.1%for RF.Our findings showed that the RF(AUC=95.1%)and LDA(AUC=941.7%)have produced the best performances in comparison to other MLTs.The outcome of this study and the landslide susceptibility maps would be useful for environmental protection.     

Fast hyperbolic deconvolutive Radon transform using generalized Fourier slice theorem

The hyperbolic Radon transform has a long history of applications in seismic data processing because of its ability to focus/sparsify the data in the transform domain. Recently, deconvolutive Radon transform has also been proposed with an improved time resolution which provides improved processing results. The basis functions of the (deconvolutive) Radon transform, however, are time-variant, making the classical Fourier based algorithms ineffective to carry out the required computations. A direct implementation of the associated summations in the time–space domain is also computationally expensive, thus limiting the application of the transform on large data sets. In this paper, we present a new method for fast computation of the hyperbolic (deconvolutive) Radon transform. The method is based on the recently proposed generalized Fourier slice theorem which establishes an analytic expression between the Fourier transforms associated with the data and Radon plane. This allows very fast computations of the forward and inverse transforms simply using fast Fourier transform and interpolation procedures. These canonical transforms are used within an efficient iterative method for sparse solution of (deconvolutive) Radon transform. Numerical examples from synthetic and field seismic data confirm high performance of the proposed fast algorithm for filling in the large gaps in seismic data, separating primaries from multiple reflections, and performing high-quality stretch-free stacking.     

博斯腾湖与伊塞克湖水位变化特征及预测对比

根据1961—2012年湖泊水位观测资料,采用时间序列线性趋势分析与小波分析法,对比研究了博斯腾湖与伊塞克湖近50多年来水位变化特征,并对湖泊未来水位变化趋势进行预测。结果显示:(1)1961—2012年,博斯腾湖和伊塞克湖年水位总体呈显著的下降趋势。20世纪80年代中期之前,两湖水位变化趋势基本一致,都平稳下降;90年代后,博斯腾湖水位变化波动比伊塞克湖更为频繁,经历了迅速上升和下降的阶段,而伊塞克湖年水位较为稳定。(2)水位小波分析结果表明,博斯腾湖和伊塞克湖年水位变化分别存在18a和22a的主周期,从水位未来变化趋势预测结果来看,博斯腾湖水位将来一段时间继续下降,伊塞克湖水位则继续上升。     

Full-scale experimental investigations on the response of a flooded passenger vehicle under subcritical conditions

Natural Hazards - Vehicles can be easily swept away by floodwaters once the flow velocity and depth reach certain critical limits, with probabilities toward fatality reported to be nearly 50%....