The design of critical facilities needs a targeted computation of the expected ground motion levels. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is the pipeline that transports natural gas from the Greek-Turkish border, through Greece and Albania, to Italy. We present here the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) that we performed for this facility, and the deaggregation of the results, aiming to identify the dominant seismic sources for a selected site along the Albanian coast, where one of the two main compressor stations is located. PSHA is based on an articulated logic tree of twenty branches, consisting of two models for source, seismicity, estimation of the maximum magnitude, and ground motion. The area with the highest hazard occurs along the Adriatic coast of Albania (PGA between 0.8 and 0.9 g on rock for a return period of 2475 years), while strong ground motions are also expected to the north of Thessaloniki, Kavala, in the southern Alexandroupolis area, as well as at the border between Greece and Turkey. The earthquakes contributing most to the hazard of the test site at high and low frequencies (1 and 5 Hz) and the corresponding design events for the TAP infrastructure have been identified as local quakes with MW 6.6 and 6.0, respectively.
In recent years, new approaches for developing earthquake rupture forecasts (ERFs) have been proposed to be used as an input for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA). Zone- based approaches with seismicity rates derived from earthquake catalogs are commonly used in many countries as the standard for national seismic hazard models. In Italy, a single zone- based ERF is currently the basis for the official seismic hazard model. In this contribution, we present eleven new ERFs, including five zone-based, two smoothed seismicity-based, two fault- based, and two geodetic-based, used for a new PSH model in Italy. The ERFs were tested against observed seismicity and were subject to an elicitation procedure by a panel of PSHA experts to verify the scientific robustness and consistency of the forecasts with respect to the observations. Tests and elicitation were finalized to weight the ERFs. The results show a good response to the new inputs to observed seismicity in the last few centuries. The entire approach was a first attempt to build a community-based set of ERFs for an Italian PSHA model. The project involved a large number of seismic hazard practitioners, with their knowledge and experience, and the development of different models to capture and explore a large range of epistemic uncertainties in building ERFs, and represents an important step forward for the new national seismic hazard model.
The Italian "Gruppo Nazionale per la Difesa dai Terremoti" has conducted a project in recent years for assessing seismic hazard in the national territory to be used as a basis for the revision of the current seismic zonation. In this project the data on the major earthquakes were reassessed and a new earthquake data file prepared. Definition of a seismotectonic model for the whole territory, based on a structural-kinematic analysis of Italy and the surrounding regions, led to the definition of 80 seismogenic zones, for which the geological and seismic characteristics were determined. Horizontal PGA and macroseismic intensity were used as seismicity parameters in the application of the Cornell probabilistic approach. The main aspects of the seismic hazard assessment are here described and the results obtained are presented and discussed. The maps prepared show the various aspects of seismic hazard which need to be considered for a global view of the problem. In particular, those with a 475-year return period, in agreement with the specifications of the new seismic Eurocode EC8, can be considered basic products for a revision of the present national seismic zonation.
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