INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS, CHENNAI

Department of Civil Engineering

CE 6310 Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering

Assignment # 3: Seismic Hazard Analysis: Deterministic and Probabilistic
Note: Make suitable assumptions wherever necessary.
1. Define the following: (a) Uncertain, (b) Random, (c) Stochastic, (d) Event,
(e) Probability (f) Distribution, (g) Density function, (h) CDF, and (i) Hazard.
2. (a) A building can suffer structural damage by fire or earthquakes. Let F and E denote the
events, with the corresponding probabilities 0.005 and 0.05, respectively. The events F and
E are statistically independent events. Calculate the probability of structural damage to the
building.
(b) The frequency of earthquakes in the Himalayan region over a period of 125 years
follows a Poisson distribution. If 16 high-intensity earthquakes occurred during this time
period, what is the probability that: (i) two high-intensity earthquakes will occur within a 3-
year period? (ii) no high-intensity earthquakes will occur within a 10-year period? (c) What
is the mean time between high-intensity earthquakes in the Himalayan region?
(c) On average, one damaging earthquake occurs in a province every 10 years. Assume the
occurrence of earthquakes is a Poisson process in time. (i) What is the probability of
having at most two earthquakes in 1 year? (ii) What is the probability of having at least
one earthquake in 5 years?
3.

4.

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5.

6.

7.

8. The distance X (in miles) from a nuclear power plant to the epicenter of potential
earthquakes within 50 miles is distributed according to

 2x
 , for 0 ≤ x ≤ 50 ;
f X ( x ) =  2500
 0 , elsewhere ;
and the magnitude Y of potential earthquakes of scales 5 to 9 is distributed according to

 3 (9 − y) 2
 , for 5 ≤ y ≤ 9 ;
f Y ( y) =  64
 0 , elsewhere .

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 Assume that X and Y are independent. Determine P(X ≤ 25 ∩ Y > 8), the probability that
the next earthquake within 50 miles will have a magnitude greater than 8 and that its
epicenter will lie within 25 miles of the nuclear plant.

9. (a) Earthquakes are registered at an average frequency of 250 per year in a given region.
Suppose that the probability is 0.09 that any earthquake will have a magnitude greater than
5 on the Richter scale. Assuming independent occurrences of earthquakes, determine the
probability mass function of X, the number of earthquakes greater than 5 on the Richter
scale per year.
(b) Derive CDF and PDF for Gutenberg-Richter earthquake recurrence model for a range of
magnitudes larger than m min .

10. A site is surrounded by three independent sources of earthquakes, out of which one is a
line source, as shown in Fig. 1. Locations of the sources with respect to the site are also
shown in the figure. The maximum magnitudes of earthquakes that have occurred in the
past for the sources are recorded as: Source 1, 7.5; Source 2, 6.8; Source 3, 5.0. Using
deterministic seismic hazard analysis (DSHA) compute the peak ground acceleration to
be experienced at the site. Use Cornell's attenuation relationship for PGA evaluation:

Fig. 1 Sources of earthquake near the site

11. (a) A site is located in an area source that is capable of producing earthquakes with equal
probability anywhere within a radius of 75 km from the site. Define the probability density
and cumulative distribution functions of the source-to-site distance to describe the locations
of earthquakes with respect to the site.
(b) In a hypothetical seismically active region, earthquakes have been recorded over an 80-
year period. Part of the record is instrumental, but part is not. Combining all available data,
it appears that the earthquakes have been distributed as follows:
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 Moment Magnitude Number of Earthquakes

3–4 ~1800
4–5 ~150
5–6 11
>6 1

(i) Estimate the Gutenberg-Richter parameters for the region.

(ii) Neglecting earthquakes of magnitude less than 3, compute the probability that an
earthquake in the region will have a moment magnitude between 5.5 and 6.5.

12. The seismicity of a particular region is described by the Gutenberg-Richter recurrence law:
log λ m = 4.0 – 0.7M
(a) What is the probability that at least one earthquake of magnitude greater than 7.0 will
occur in a 10–year period? In a 50–year period? In a 250–year period?
(b) What is the probability that exactly one earthquake of magnitude greater than 7.0 will
occur in a 10–year period? In a 50–year period? In a 250–year period?
Determine the earthquake magnitude that would have a 10% probability of being exceeded
at least once in a 50–year period.

13. Using the predictive relationship of Campbell and Bozorgnia (1994) [Eq. (3.25), p. 88,
Kramer book], compute the probability that a M w = 7 earthquake on a strike-slip fault
would cause a peak horizontal acceleration greater than 0.4g at a soft-rock site 15 km from
the closet point on the rupture surface. (Refer page No. 127, Kramer’s book).

14. The site under consideration is shown in Fig. 2 with three potential earthquake source
zones. Seismicity of the source zones and other characteristics are also given. Using the
same predictive relationship as that considered for DSHA (Problem 10) with σ lnPGA = 0.57,
obtain the seismic hazard curve for the site (Table 1).

Fig. 2 Sources of earthquake near the site

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 Table 1 Seismicity of the source zones

15. Carry out systematically the PSHA for the site given that the recurrence relationship for
each of the source zones is known. Assuming that the seismicity of the respective source
zones are described by (Refer page No. 131, Kramer’s book)

Source zone 1: log λ m = 4.4 – 1.0M

Source zone 2: log λ m = 3.5 – 0.8M
Source zone 3: log λ m = 2.7 – 1.2M
16.

17. A site is surrounded by two sources as shown in Fig. 3. Determine the anticipated mean
value of the PGA and the probability of it exceeding the value of 0.2g using the same
attenuation law used in Problem 10.

Fig. 3 A site affected by a point source and an area source of earthquake

18. A site has two earthquake sources, a point source (Source 1) and segments of line sources
(Source 2). The distributions of the magnitudes of the earthquake for Source 1 and Source
2 are shown in Fig. 4. The distribution of the source to site distance for Source 2 is also
shown in the same figure. Occurrences of earthquakes for Sources 1 and 2 are given by
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 Develop a seismic hazard curve for peak acceleration at the site using the attenuation
relationship given in Problem 10. Assume that magnitudes less than 4 do not contribute to
the seismic hazard.

Fig. 4 Characteristics of the sources: (a) distribution of source to site distance for Source 2, (b)
distribution of the magnitude of earthquake for Source 1, and (c) distribution of the magnitude
of earthquake for Source 2
19.

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20. A region, as shown in Fig. 5 is to be microzoned with respect to the PGA at the ground
surface. Use the attenuation relationship given in Problem 10 and assume it to be valid for
the rock bed. For microzination, the region is divided into 4 sub-areas. Determine the
design PGA for the center of each sub-region.

Fig. 5 Area to be microzoned using both DSHA and PSHA

21. A big city is under the influence of several hypothetical seismic sources. The probabilities
of earthquake occurrences generated by short-, intermediate-and far-distance seismic
sources are given as
P(short-distance) = 0.2, P(intermediate-distance) = 0.4 , P(far-distance) = 0.4
A statistical study on past earthquakes indicated the following probabilities of large-to-
small magnitude events conditioned on above source-to-site distance ranges
P(large-magnitude|short-distance) = 0.3, P(moderate-magnitude|short-distance) = 0.5
P(small-magnitude|short-distance) = 0.2
P(large-magnitude|intermediate-distance) = 0.2
P(moderate-magnitude|intermediate-distance) = 0.4
P(small-magnitude|intermediate-distance) = 0.4
P(large-magnitude|far-distance) = 0.1, P(moderate-magnitude|far-distance) = 0.3
P(small-magnitude|far-distance) = 0.6
An engineering company in the city is interested in the probability of severe damage
caused by earthquakes of different sizes. Their statistical studies suggest that probabilities
of damage conditioned on large, moderate and small magnitude events are 0.6, 0.3 and
0.1 regardless of source-to-site distance from the causative seismic source. Compute the
probability of severe damage in the city for a future earthquake considering the
surrounding seismicity.
22.

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24. (a)

(b)

25. (a)

(b)

26.

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