Towards Testing Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Estimates

Mostafa Mousavi, & Gregory C. Beroza

Published August 12, 2017, SCEC Contribution #7528, 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #003

Hazard curves in PSHA models are used for quantifying the seismic hazards by providing the annual rates of exceedance, the reciprocal of the return period, at various ground-motion levels. Beginning in 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) started to produce one-year PSHA models for the central and eastern United States (CEUS) to account for the elevated seismicity in this region mainly due to the wastewater injection. These models have much shorter return periods (99.5 years) compared to the previous models (e.g. 2475 years for the 2014 model) and consider recent levels of induced seismicity in their construction. The non-stationarity in the level and location of wastewater injection; however, should lead to a change in the rate of induced seismicity, which makes any time-independent forecast challenging. We assess the 2016 seismic-hazard model by comparing the model forecast with the observed ground motions during a one year period. For this test, we use more than 18,000 instrumental strong motions recorded during 2016 by 197 stations in the CEUS. We also explore the uncertainties and spatial variability of sub-models, and initial results of the test.

Key Words
Probabilistic Seismic Hazard

Citation
Mousavi, M., & Beroza, G. C. (2017, 08). Towards Testing Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Estimates. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Earthquake Forecasting and Predictability (EFP)