Earthquakes are among the costliest of all natural disasters and have the potential to cause devastating damage to engineering systems in seismic regions. Today, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world live with a significant risk to their lives and property from earthquakes. Furthermore, billions of dollars of public infrastructure are continuously at risk as are many local, regional, and even national economies. In Southern Caucasus, earthquakes are the most dangerous hazard, causing death, injury, and destruction of buildings and infrastructure while also triggering secondary events such as landslides, mudslides, fire and avalanches.
In Session 8, we review the main concepts of seismic hazard and risk analysis:
- Key elements of seismic hazards
- Basic concepts of earthquake seismology and the terminology used to describe earthquakes and their effects
- Ground motion measurement, the parameters used to characterize strong ground motion, and methods for prediction of those parameters, Attenuation Models
- Hazard Assessment
- Deterministic and probabilistic approach
- Site-specific analyses and effects of local soil conditions on strong ground motion
