Foreign Hazard Maps
Afghanistan
Afghanistan is located in the geologically active part of the world where the northward-moving Indian plate is colliding with the southern part of the Eurasian plate at a rate of about 1.7 inches per year. This collision has created the world's highest mountains and causes slips on major faults that generate large, often devastating earthquakes. Every few years a powerful earthquake causes significant damage or fatalities.
Southeast Asia
The ground motion hazard for Sumatra and the Malaysian peninsula is calculated in a probabilistic framework, using procedures developed for the US National Seismic Hazard Maps. We constructed regional earthquake source models and used standard published and modified attenuation equations to calculate peak ground acceleration at 2% and 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years for rock site conditions. We developed or modified earthquake catalogs and declustered these catalogs to include only independent earthquakes. The resulting catalogs were used to define four source zones that characterize earthquakes in four tectonic environments: subduction zone interface earthquakes, subduction zone deep intraslab earthquakes, strike-slip transform earthquakes, and intraplate earthquakes.
State of Gujarat, India
We test the sensitivity of seismic hazard to three fault source models for the northwestern portion of Gujarat, India. The models incorporate different characteristic earthquake magnitudes on three faults with individual recurrence intervals of either 800 or 1600 years. These recurrence intervals imply that large earthquakes occur on one of these faults every 266—533 years, similar to the rate of historic large earthquakes in this region during the past two centuries and for earthquakes in intraplate environments like the New Madrid region in the central United States.
