A Geospatial Approach for Mapping the Earthquake-Induced Liquefaction Risk at the European Scale

Abstract

This paper presents a geospatial methodology for zoning the earthquake-induced soil liquefaction risk at a continental scale and set-up in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment by coupling data-driven and knowledge-driven approaches. It is worth mentioning that liquefaction is a phenomenon of soil instability occurring at a very local spatial scale; thus, the mega-zonation of liquefaction risk at a continental scale is a hard facing challenge. Since the risk from natural disasters is the convolution of hazard, vulnerability, and exposure, the liquefaction risk mapping is based on the combination of geospatial explanatory variables, available at the continental scale, of the previously listed three assumed independent random variables. First, by applying a prediction model calibrated for Europe, the probability of liquefaction is mapped for the whole continent. Then, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted to identify areas that have a high risk of liquefaction, taking into account proxy data for exposure. The maps are computed for different levels of severity of ground shaking specified by three return periods (i.e., 475, 975, and 2475 years). A broad variety of stakeholders would benefit from the outcomes of this study, such as civil protection organizations, insurance and re-insurance companies, and infrastructure operators.

Regional-Scale Seismic Liquefaction Susceptibility Mapping via an Empirical Approach Validated by Site-Specific Analyses

“…Therefore, the exposure of the study area to seismic events with a magnitude greater than 5, together with the lithostratigraphic and hydrogeological setting, determine conditions favourable for the occurrence of liquefaction phenomena [46]. This gives rise, in particular, in the Tavoliere delle Puglie sector, to a high liquefaction potential [20,47] confirmed also by the historically documented soil liquefaction events (Figure 1) [47][48][49][50]. [44]) and major (Mw ≥ 5.0) historical and instrumental earthquakes are from Rovida [42,43]).…”

Development of Active Fault Mapping Method Using Geoelectric and Geographical Information System

“…Quick mapping is the process of gathering, processing, and displaying geographic data rapidly to meet an event's information demands under the relevant standards [9]. It is possible to utilize the data produced by The Rapid Mapping operations as a framework to support disaster management (initial disaster management) policies at all phases, including pre-disaster, during the catastrophe, and post-disaster [10].…”

Variable-resolution building exposure modelling for earthquake and tsunami scenario-based risk assessment: an application case in Lima, Peru

“…Finite fault ruptures are modelled using the Open-Quake engine (Pagani et al, 2014) emulating the historical earthquake that occurred in 1746, in line with previous studies (e.g. Mas et al, 2014;Pulido et al, 2015;Ceferino et al, 2018a). The basic parameters used in the simulations are hypocentre location (longitude = −77.93 (Allen and Wald, 2007) and seismic microzonation (Aguilar et al, 2013) were compiled and merged to the same resolution (30 arcsec, ∼ 1 km).…”

“…Yilmaz et al, 2021) instead of being represented at more hazard-compliant resolutions (e.g. Bozzoni et al, 2021b). Similarly, despite building exposure models for flood and earthquake vulnerabilities being able to be aggregated at moderate resolutions (e.g.…”