Updating seismic hazard models for Kuwait

Abstract The valuable results from this research are the first and essential step for assessing seismic risk in Kuwait. The increase in the urban development and construction of tall buildings and skyscrapers in Kuwait necessitated an estimate of the seismic risk for creating a unified seismic code for Kuwait. This research comes to make the necessarily step by assessing the seismic hazard and deaggregation in the State of Kuwait. For this purpose, the historical and instrumental seismic catalogs of Kuwait and the active Zagros Seismic Belt were primarily compiled, unifying the magnitudes, removing unnecessary earthquakes (seismicity declustering) and considering the completeness of the catalogs. Multi-seismotectonic models for Kuwait region incorporate earthquake focal mechanisms, seismicity pattern, and structural geological situation have been created to reduce epistemic uncertainty. The recurrence parameters as well as the maximum expected earthquake from each seismic source were fundamentally estimated. Appropriate ground motion attenuation relation within a logic tree formulation was mainly used in creating hazard maps. A state-of-the-art probabilistic approach is used herein to produce hazard maps at return periods of 75, 475, 975 and 2475 years (equivalent to 50%, 10%, 5% and 2%, respectively, probability of exceedance in 50 years) at periods of PGA, 0.1, 1 and 4 seconds. The computations of hazard maps were constructed using spacing grid of 0.2° × 0.2° all over the Kuwait area. Uniform hazard spectrum and deaggregation charts have been adopted for all six governorates of Kuwait. These results with vulnerability index are the main components for estimating the seismic risk of Kuwait.