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Disasters, humanitarianism and emergencies
Published in Ian Scoones, Andy Stirling, The Politics of Uncertainty, 2020
Mark Pelling, Detlef Müller-Mahn, John McCloskey
On 28 March 2005 the magnitude 8.7 Nias earthquake ruptured the Sunda megathrust fault where the Indo-Australian plate is being forced under the Eurasian plate. The earthquake, at the time the fourth biggest ever instrumentally recorded, produced strong shaking in the islands of the Sumatran forearc and along the densely populated west Sumatran coastline, causing significant damage and more than 1,000 deaths (Hsu et al. 2005). While the impact of such a large earthquake was not surprising, and perhaps less severe than might have been expected, this earthquake was unique in that its approximate location and energy release had been forecast in a paper that was published in an international peer-reviewed science journal only 11 days previously (McCloskey et al. 2008). On the one hand, this forecast could be viewed as a confirmation of the physical understanding of crustal physics that enabled it, but, on the other, for many – including its authors – it confirmed the fundamental intractability of earthquake prediction: a step change in precision from forecasting where, when and how big future events might be.
New assessment of the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for the greater Jakarta area, Indonesia
Published in Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, 2023
Ruben Damanik, Endra Gunawan, Sri Widiyantoro, Pepen Supendi, Fiza Wira Atmaja, Yayan Mi’rojul Husni, David P. Sahara
The tectonic setting of Java Island is controlled by the Australian and Eurasian Plates (Bock et al. 2003). The development of continuous GPS installations on the island of Java was carried out to determine the plate velocity and the interplate coupling model (Hanifa et al. 2014; Gunawan et al. 2016; Koulali et al. 2017). In addition, Widiyantoro et al. (2022) suggest that the Java megathrust is capable of generating earthquakes with Mw 9.1. The modelling of earthquake subduction sources in the study region is divided into two subduction segments: the Selat Sunda megathrust and the west-central Java megathrust. The parameters of the subduction source model, including segment, dimension, dip, maximum magnitude and Gutenberg–Richter b-values, are shown in Table 1.
Seismic Evaluation of Tall Buildings Using a Simplified but Accurate Analysis Procedure
Published in Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 2018
Tahir Mehmood, Pennung Warnitchai, Phichaya Suwansaya
In the past studies, the case study buildings selected for accuracy verification of the UMRHA procedure are either hypothetical [Chopra and Goel, 2001; Maniatakis et al., 2013] or simple without lateral-torsional coupling effect [Munir and Warnitchai, 2012]. The selected case study buildings used in this study are real and were modeled by following the as-built drawing in the region of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. The accuracy and reliability of the UMRHA procedure are examined in this paper using four case study buildings in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. Due to the absence of nearby seismic sources, the city has long been considered as being free from seismic risk, and most existing buildings in Bangkok have been designed and constructed without any consideration on seismic loading. Recent seismic hazard studies, however, indicate that the city is still at risk from damaging ground motions. The first primary factor causing this risk is the presence of several distant seismic sources capable of producing large-magnitude earthquakes. These sources are active crustal faults in Western Thailand and Myanmar and the Sunda megathrust subduction zone in the Andaman Sea [McCaffrey, 2009; Petersen et al., 2007]. The second factor is the ability of thick soil deposits in the Bangkok basin to greatly amplify earthquake ground motions, particularly in the long period range of about 1–4 s [Ashford et al., 2000; Poovarodom and Plalinyot, 2013; Tuladha et al., 2004; Warnitchai et.al., 2000]. The third factor is the existence of more than a thousand of tall buildings that are quite vulnerable to long-period ground motions. With all these factors combined, the seismic risk of Bangkok is comprehensible. It is thus becoming imperative to assess the potential impacts of large distant earthquakes to tall buildings in Bangkok.