Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment of Kazakhstan and Almaty city in peak ground accelerations

As for many post-soviet countries, Kazakhstan's building code for seismic design was based on a deterministic approach. Recently, Kazakhstan seismologists are engaged to adapt the PSHA (probabilistic hazard assessment) procedure to the large amount of available geological, geophysical and tectonic Kazakh data and to meet standard requirements for the Eurocode 8. The new procedure has been used within National projects to develop the Probabilistic GSZ (General Seismic Zoning) maps of the Kazakhstan territory and the SMZ (Probabilistic Seismic Microzoning) maps of Almaty city. They agree with the seismic design principles of Eurocode 8 and are expressed in terms of not only seismic intensity, but also engineering parameters (peak ground acceleration PGA). The whole packet of maps has been developed by the Institute of Seismology, together with other Kazakhstan Institutions. Our group was responsible for making analysis in PGA. The GSZ maps and hazard assessment maps for SMZ in terms of PGA for return periods 475 and 2475 years are considered in the article. Keywords: Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, Seismic zoning map, Peak ground acceleration, Seismic sources, Seismotectonic setting, Seismic regime, Ground motion prediction equation