The regional earthquake potential in Taiwan

Ching-Ying Hsu

Abstract

Taiwan is located on the boundary between Eurasian Plate and Philippine Plate, and earthquakes occur frequently in this area. Therefore, seismic hazard assessment is a important business for Taiwanwith a large population. At present many country are devoted to study earthquake prediction, but it is difficultly because there are too many factors are uncertain, at the same time, scholars also try to compute the probabilities of earthquakes of somewhere, the earthquake probabilities are estimated using statistic method, it can provide a reference for engineering project and precaution or preparedness against earthquake calamities.

In this study we divided Taiwan into 13 regions in accordance with the seismic active characteristic, and analysis the shallow events which cause large damage. There was a time interval of about 107 years of the earthquake events, from 1900 to 2007/10. We hypothesize that the earthquake probability fit in with log-normal probability density function, and create the probability model represent each region by the statistic inter-arrival time, also consider the elapse time of each region, then we compute the earthquake probabilities within 10 to 50 years in each regions.

Further, we use the attenuation relationship function and the site amendment function to produce the peak ground acceleration shake map of each regions, these shake maps can be used for engineering project and precaution or preparedness against earthquake calamities in the further.