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Updated seismic hazard assessment of Tunisia

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Abstract

Modern earthquake loss models make use of earthquake catalogs relevant to the seismic hazard assessment upon seismicity and seismotectonic analysis. The main objective of this paper is to investigate a recently compiled catalog (National Institute of Meteorology or INM catalog: 412-2011) and to generate seismic hazard maps through classical probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) and smoothed-gridded seismicity models for Tunisia. It is now established with the local earthquake bulletin that the recent seismicity of Tunisia is sparse and moderate. Therefore, efforts must be undertaken to elaborate a robust hazard analysis for risk assessment and seismic design purposes. These recommendations follow the recently published reports by the World Bank that describe the seismic risk in Tunis City as being beyond a tolerable level with an MSK intensity level of VII. Some attempts were made during the past two decades to assess the seismic hazard for Tunisia and they have mostly failed to properly investigate the historical and instrumental seismicity catalog. This limitation also exists for the key aspect of epistemic and random uncertainties impact on the final seismic hazard assessment. This study also investigates new ground motion prediction equations suitable for use in Tunisia. The methodology applied herein uses, for the first time in PSHA of Tunisia, seismicity parameters integrated in logic tree framework to capture epistemic uncertainties through three different seismic source models. It also makes use of the recently released version of OpenQuake engine; an open-source tool for seismic hazard and risk assessment developed in the framework of the Global Earthquake Model.

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Abbreviations

EMSC:

Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre

FMD:

Frequency magnitude distribution

GEM:

Global Earthquake Model

GMPE:

Ground motion predictive equation

GR:

Gutenberg Richter

GSHAP:

Global seismic hazard assessment program

INM:

National Institute of Meteorology

ISC:

International Seismological Centre

NGA:

Next generation of attenuation

PSA:

Pseudo spectral acceleration

PSHA:

Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Gordon Woo from RMS for providing us with “KERGRID” program and also for his precious comments on the use of the smoothed-gridded seismicity approach in the context of moderate seismicity regions such as the case of Tunisia. We are grateful to Dr. Barbara Šket Motnikar from the Environmental Agency of Slovenia who accepted to provide us with OHAZ program and who helped us with her valuable recommendations and support in the use of this program. We wish to express our special thanks to Dr. Mustapha Meghraoui from University of Strasbourg, and Dr. Vunganai Midzi, from the Council of Geosciences of South Africa, for their wide contribution to the revision of this manuscript. We also gratefully acknowledge constructive and detailed reviews made by Dr. Marco Pagani and Dr. Graeme Weatherill from GEM Technical Staff. Particular thanks are addressed to Dr. Rui Pinho for his assistance in improving this work in collaboration with the GEM technical team by using the OpenQuake engine and hazard modeling tools, as well as to Dr. Dario Slejko and three other anonymous experts whose detailed reviews led to improvements of previous versions of this manuscript.

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  1. Département de génie civil, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Tunis, Université Tunis El Manar, BP 37 le Belvédère, Tunis, Tunisia

    Ahmed Ksentini & Najla Bouden Romdhane

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  1. Ahmed Ksentini
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Correspondence to Ahmed Ksentini.

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Ksentini, A., Romdhane, N.B. Updated seismic hazard assessment of Tunisia. Bull Earthquake Eng 12, 647–670 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-013-9548-y

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