In this study, a seismogenic source zone model for the Algeria-Morocco region is proposed for seismic forecasting and seismic hazard studies. The delineation includes five zones based on available seismic, geological and geophysical data.
Earthquake occurrence process is modeled and analyzed using recent earthquake catalogs compiled for Northern Morocco and Northern Algeria in former studies. In these catalogs, dependent events were identified and removed by adapting Gardner and Knopoff declustering procedure to the study region. Magnitudes of completeness were estimated using different methods, then the Poissonian character of the sub-catalogs obtained for different were analyzed.
The procedure developed by Kijko and Sellevoll (1989, 1992) and Kijko and Graham (1998, 1999), including the recent improvement of the maximum possible earthquake magnitude estimator proposed by Kijko and Sing (2011), is used to estimate seismic hazard parameters.
The b-value of the Gutenberg-Richter recurrence relationship, taken as an area-specific seismic hazard parameter has been computed using an extension of the Aki-Utsu b-value estimator for incomplete earthquake catalogs (Kijko and Smit, 2012). Then, we derive the activity rate λ(m) for events above the magnitude m, the maximum possible magnitude mmax and its probability distribution function (pdf). These parameters were computed and analyzed for five seismogenic source zones delineated in the Algeria-Morocco region.
The second part of this study is related to site-specific seismic hazard, which has been performed in terms of maximum possible acceleration and seismic hazard curves in terms of PGA with a given probability of exceedance in T years, given a hypothetical engineering structure (HES) located at the most populated and industrial cities in the Algeria-Morocco region.