Seismic Hazard Assessment of The Western Yemen Region

Abstract

This paper studies the tectonic and the seismicity features of western Yemen and provides new
approaches for the interpretation of old and recent earthquake data for the improved assessment of the
regional seismic hazards. A regionalized variable approach is used to study the earthquake groundmotion
for the region based on geostatistical methods using the kriging technique and the Poisson stochastic model also is involved. The results are presented in the form of an iso - acceleration map as well as acceleration zone graphs. The application of kriging for estimating the ground shaking in the study region succeeded clearly in accomplishing its ultimate aim where the generated groundmotion hazard map is well
correlated with the instrumental magnitude and historical intensity of any earthquake occurrence in the
study region. The results obtained from this study indicate that the relative level of ground motion in
western Yemen region is found to be moderate to high. This hazard must be considered in any design /
construction of engineering structures in the region.