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Amplification features and observed damages in İzmir (Turkey) due to 2020 Samos (Aegean Sea) earthquake: identifying basin effects and design requirements

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Abstract

On October 30th 2020, a M7.0 earthquake occurred in the Aegean Sea close to Samos Island (Greece) and the western coast of Turkey that had a strong impact on the city of İzmir, about 70 km away from the epicenter. 116 people were killed, several hundreds were injured and about 4% of the structures sustained damages, including buildings that totally collapsed. Strong amplification of ground motion within Bornova basin (İzmir) where severe damages were observed, has been reported among the detrimental factors that may have contributed to such earthquake losses. This study is devoted to providing evidence that the reason of the observed intensity of ground motion in Bornova basin is mainly related to site effects and in particular to what is referred to as basin effects. The evaluation of observations for basin effects is based on a analysis with empirical techniques in frequency domain as well as with time–frequency analyses to reveal the contribution of different wave types in the response. Empirical findings are correlated with the particular geological structure of the Bornova basin, the latter being enhanced with a representative deep VS model using surface wave inversion on strong motion recordings. Furthermore, empirical findings are validated with 2D numerical analyses of a simplified basin model. Building characteristics and structural damages are also discussed in an attempt to comprehend the relation between them and basin effects. Noting that basin effects are not explicitly included in any modern seismic code, an approach is proposed to introduce the extra amplification due to basin effects in design practice.

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Availability of data and material

Earthquake recordings were retrieved from the Turkish Accelerometric Database and Analysis System (https://tadas.afad.gov.tr).

Code availability

Computer Programs in Seismology available at http://www.eas.slu.edu/eqc/eqccps.html were used for the dispersion curves and inversion procedure. Signal processing was made with Seismic Analysis Code available at http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/forms/sac/. Ground motion simulations were performed with 2DFDDVS code available at http://www.nuquake.eu/Computer_Codes/2dfd.htm.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to deeply thank Professor Sinan Akkar, who kindly provided the software spektral for the computation of the elastic response spectra according to the TBEC 2018 seismic code. Fruitful discussions with Professors Mustafa Erdik, Alper Ilki, Nuray Aydinoglou and Polat Gülkan are also kindly acknowledged. Strong motion stations metadata and earthquake records reported in this study were retrieved from the Turkish Accelerometric Database and Analysis System (https://tadas.afad.gov.tr) under the auspices of the Disaster & Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), Presidential of Earthquake Department, Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry. The research described herein has received partial funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 730900 (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe ‘SERA’ project). Comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.

Funding

This study was partially funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 730900 (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe ‘SERA’ project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering EPPO-ITSAK, Eleones-Pylaia, 55535, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Konstantia Makra & Emmanouil Rovithis

  2. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O.B. 424, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Evi Riga, Dimitrios Raptakis & Kyriazis Pitilakis

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  1. Konstantia Makra
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  2. Emmanouil Rovithis
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Correspondence to Konstantia Makra.

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Makra, K., Rovithis, E., Riga, E. et al. Amplification features and observed damages in İzmir (Turkey) due to 2020 Samos (Aegean Sea) earthquake: identifying basin effects and design requirements. Bull Earthquake Eng 19, 4773–4804 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-021-01148-3

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