A b s t r a c tIn the present study, the level of the largest earthquake hazard is assessed in 28 seismic zones of the NW Himalaya and its vicinity, which is a highly seismically active region of the world. Gumbel's third asymptotic distribution (hereafter as GIII) is adopted for the evaluation of the largest earthquake magnitudes in these seismic zones. Instead of taking in account any type of M max , in the present study we consider the Ȧ value which is the largest earthquake magnitude that a region can experience according to the GIII statistics. A function of the form Ĭ(Ȧ, RP 6.0 ) is providing in this way a relatively largest earthquake hazard scale defined by the letter K (K index). The return periods for the Ȧ values (earthquake magnitudes) 6 or larger (RP 6.0 ) are also calculated. According to this index, the investigated seismic zones are classified into five groups and it is shown that seismic zones 3 (Quetta of Pakistan), 11 (Hindukush), 15 (northern Pamirs), and 23 (Kangra, Himachal Pradesh of India) correspond to a "very high" K index which is 6.

A study on the aftershock sequences distributed along the subductions in Japan and Kuril islands, as well as in

Landslides can provoke lifeline’s performance malfunction, injuries or fatalities and may diminish accessibility to critical facilities and surrounding properties. The scope of this research is to describe and to identify the triggering factors for three landslides along the road from Drosopigi village to the top of Vitsi Mountain at Florina territory using all the available data. Several information were collected for this area, such as the annual rate of the rainfall/ snowfall, the rainfall intensity/day, the seismicity, the geomorphology, the geology, the lithology and the hydrologic conditions. Moreover, in-situ investigations of the landslides, geotechnical and laboratory tests were carried out in three geotechnical boreholes to indentify the soil formations nearby the landslides. Taking into account that the landslides are located 18km, 22km and 25km,away from the epicenters of two historical earthquakes with magnitudes Mw= 6.0 και 6.5 and also that last winter heavy rainfalls/snowfalls were observed in the area with very low temperatures (-15OC), slope’s failure may have been triggered by an earthquake, by snowfalls/rainfalls or by human activities?

The conditional probabilities method is considered to be an alternative approach in order to estimate the earthquake hazard. For