Abstract
Central Switzerland shows comparatively high seismic activity by Swiss standards. Many historical earthquakes are known and several of them caused damage. The last major event dates back to 1964 and has the characteristics of an earthquake swarm. Among dozens of felt shocks were two main shocks (Mw = 5 and 5.7) that moderately damaged a limited area with hundreds of buildings suffering loss. Our aim here was to reconstruct the damage field and to analyze whether it was influenced by site effects. Given the existence of a contemporary damage assessment and other historical sources, we could describe the damage field in detail. For about 95% of the affected buildings, we could reconstruct the location and extent of loss, using assessments from the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS 98). Spatial analysis of the resulting data showed that most losses were concentrated in the villages of Sarnen and Kerns. Damage to residential houses and barns was by far most frequent (90%), but expensive losses to the relatively few sacral buildings were responsible for almost 50% of the repair costs. We compared the damage data with deposit thickness and soil composition and carried out field experiments using H/V spectral ratios to measure the fundamental frequency of ground resonance at 75 sites to estimate the frequency band in which amplification occurs. Our results show that locations on both thick fluviatile sediments and large alluvial cones showed higher intensities than did other ground types. Moreover, at some sites, intensity was probably increased by a layer of weathered rock below thin deposits.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was prepared while working for a PhD project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Many people have contributed to its success. We would like to thank all of them. Special thanks go to Vreni Fanger who helped locate buildings and to Christoph Beer who did much previous work with respect to microzonation in our region. We also thank our English editor Dr. Kathleen J. Jackson. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (project number: 205121-100510).
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Fritsche, S., Fäh, D., Steiner, B. et al. Damage field and site effects: multidisciplinary studies of the 1964 earthquake series in Central Switzerland. Nat Hazards 48, 203–227 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-008-9258-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-008-9258-y