Earthquake Risk Assessment of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Province, Pakistan

Abstract

Kashmir 2005 and recent earthquakes in Baluchistan 2013 demand the earthquake hazard and risk assessment of whole country. Assessing the risk associated with earthquake is challenging as well as very essential component for earthquake risk mitigation. Many researchers have already work on hazard assessment of the whole or part of country but the earthquake risk assessment has not been carried out at national or provincial level. Therefore Earthquake Risk Assessment (ERA) of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) was selected for this study. ERA framework developed by Khan (2011) has been used in hazard and risk calculation. Seismic hazard in terms of Peak Ground acceleration (PGA) was estimated for period of 100 years using Probabilistic method. Ambarasey’s 2005 Ground Motion Prediction Equation (GMPE) was used in the hazard assessment considering the local soil effects in term of shear wave velocity, while building inventory was developed from projected census data. Maximum PGA of 0.39 g occurred in region of district Mansehra, district Battagram and some parts of district Shangla across Indus River. It was observed that average risk per $1000 ranged between $(5 -145) depending upon the type of building and its location. It has been concluded that most of the risk is concentrated in six districts in order of severity i.e Masehra, Battagrarm, Kohistan, Swat, Chitral and Abbottabad due to high hazard and vulnerability of building stock. Seismic risk estimated was compatible with seismo-tectonic of area, exposure and vulnerability of building stock. Insurance premium was calculated for the study region and risk mitigation recommendations are made for the study region.