Regional seismic hazard for Revithoussa, Greece: an earthquake early warning Shield and selection of alert signals

• Main Authors: Y. Xu, P. W. Burton, G.-A. Tselentis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2003-01-01
• Series: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
• Online Access: http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/3/757/2003/nhess-3-757-2003.pdf

The feasibility of an earthquake early warning Shield in Greece is being explored as a European demonstration project. This will be the first early warning system in Europe. The island of Revithoussa is a liquid natural gas storage facility near Athens from which a pipeline runs to a gas distribution centre in Athens. The Shield is being centred on these facilities. The purpose here is to analyze seismicity and seismic hazard in relation to the Shield centre and the remote sensor sites in the Shield network, eventually to help characterize the hazard levels, seismic signals and ground vibration levels that might be observed or create an alert situation at a station. Thus this paper mainly gives estimation of local seismic hazard in the regional working area of Revithoussa by studying extreme peak ground acceleration (PGA) and magnitudes.</p> <p style='line-height: 20px;'>Within the Shield region, the most important zone to be detected is WNW from the Shield centre and is at a relatively short distance (50 km or less), the Gulf of Corinth (active normal faults) region. This is the critical zone for early warning of strong ground shaking. A second key region of seismicity is at an intermediate distance (100 km or more) from the centre, the Hellenic seismic zone south or southeast from Peloponnisos. A third region to be detected would be the northeastern region from the centre and is at a relatively long distance (about 150 km), Lemnos Island and neighboring region. Several parameters are estimated to characterize the seismicity and hazard. These include: the 50-year PGA with 90% probability of not being exceeded (pnbe) using Theodulidis & Papazachos strong motion attenuation for Greece, PGA_NTP; the 50-year magnitude and also at the 90% pnbe, M₅₀ and M_P50, respectively. There are also estimates of the earthquake that is most likely to be felt at a damaging intensity level, these are the most perceptible earthquakes at intensities VI, VII and VIII with magnitudes M_VI, M_VII and M_VIII. Example results (from many) include the corresponding parameters describing the hazard for Revithoussa as follows: PGA_NTP: 203 cm s^{- 2} , M₅₀: 6.5, M_p50: 6.9, M_VI: 5.8, M_VII: 6.1 and M_VIII: 6.4. These data are also useful in selecting expected alert-signals i.e. examples of strong ground vibration histories that might be expected at a Shield station in the alert situation.