Seismic vulnerability assessment for Montreal

ABSTRACT In Canada, Montreal is the second city with the highest seismic risk. This is due to its relatively high seismic hazard, old infrastructures and high population density. The region is characterised by moderate seismic activity with no recent record of a major earthquake. The lack of historical strong ground motion records for the region contributes to large uncertainties in the estimation of hazards. Among the sources of uncertainty, the attenuation function is the main contributor and its effect on estimates of risks is investigated. Epistemic uncertainty was considered by obtaining damage estimates for three attenuation functions that were developed for Eastern North America. The results indicate that loss estimates are highly sensitive to the choice of the attenuation function and suggest that epistemic uncertainty should be considered both for the definition of the hazard function and in loss estimation methodologies. Seismic loss estimates are performed for a 2% in 50 years seismic threat, which corresponds to the design level earthquake in the national building code of Canada, using HAZUS-MH4 for the Montreal region over 522 census tracts. The study estimated that for the average scenario roughly 5% of the building stock would be damaged with direct economic losses evaluated at 1.4 billion dollars for such a scenario. The maximum number of casualties would result in approximately 500 people being injured or dead at a calculated time of occurrence of 2 pm.

[1]  L. Chouinard,et al.  SEISMIC SITE EFFECTS AND SEISMIC RISK IN THE MONTREAL AREA-THE INFLUENCE OF MARINE CLAYS , 2007 .

[3]  Gail M. Atkinson,et al.  Earthquake Ground-Motion Prediction Equations for Eastern North America , 2006 .

[4]  Gail M. Atkinson,et al.  Ground-Motion Prediction Equations for Eastern North America from a Referenced Empirical Approach: Implications for Epistemic Uncertainty , 2008 .

[5]  Robert V. Whitman,et al.  Regression Models For Evaluating Liquefaction Probability , 1988 .

[6]  L. Chouinard,et al.  Characterization of site effects in Montreal, Canada , 2009 .

[7]  Terje Haukaas,et al.  Seismic risk analysis with reliability methods, part I: Models , 2013 .

[8]  L. Chouinard,et al.  Microzonation models for Montreal with respect to $$\hbox {V}_\mathrm{S30}$$VS30 , 2015 .

[9]  W. D. Liam Finn,et al.  Erratum: Ground motion amplification factors for the proposed 2005 edition of the National Building Code of Canada , 2003 .

[10]  John Adams,et al.  Fourth generation seismic hazard maps of Canada: values for over 650 Canadian localities intended for the 2005 National Building Code of Canada , 2003 .

[11]  S. Harmsen,et al.  Documentation for the 2002 update of the national seismic hazard maps , 2002 .

[12]  Scenario shakemaps for Montreal , 2015 .

[13]  L. Chouinard,et al.  Microzonation models for Montreal with respect to VS30\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\hbox {V}_\mathr , 2014, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering.

[14]  Karine Lefebvre.  Caractérisation structurale et évaluation de la vulnérabilité sismique des bâtiments historiques en maçonnerie du Vieux-Montréal , 2004 .

[15]  S. Halchuk,et al.  Revised deaggregation of seismic hazard for selected Canadian cities , 2007 .

[16]  G. Atkinson,et al.  Ground-motion relations for eastern North America , 1995, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

[17]  Terje Haukaas,et al.  Seismic risk analysis with reliability methods, part II: Analysis , 2013 .