Product catalogue
National Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment for Papua New Guinea (2019 Revision)
Through Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Geoscience Australia has been working closely with the Government of Papua New Guinea technical agencies (Rabaul Volcano Observatory, Port Moresby Geophysical Observatory, and Engineering Geology Branch) since September 2010 to enhance their capabilities to monitor and assess natural hazards. The objective of this program is to support the Government of Papua New Guinea in developing fundamental information and practices for the effective response and management of natural hazard events in PNG.
Earthquakes as natural hazards are one of the key focus points of this project, as they continue to cause loss of life and widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure in Papua New Guinea. The country’s vulnerability to earthquakes is evident from the significant socio-economic consequences of recent major events in Papua New Guinea, e.g., a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that occurred in the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea in 2018.
Earthquake risk is likely to increase significantly in the years to come due to the growth in population and urbanization in Papua New Guinea. However, earthquake risk, unlike hazard, can be managed and minimized. One obvious example would be minimizing earthquake risk by constructing earthquake-resistant structures following building standards.
The high level of earthquake hazard of Papua New Guinea has been long recognised and the suite of building standards released in 1982 contained provisions to impart adequate resilience to buildings based on the best understanding of seismic hazard available at that time. However, the building standards and incorporated seismic hazard assessment for Papua New Guinea has not been updated since the 1980s.
The integration of modern national seismic hazard models into national building codes and practices provides the most effective way that we can reduce human casualties and economic losses from future earthquakes. This report aims at partially fulfilling this task by performing a probabilistic seismic hazard assessment to underpin a revision of the earthquake loading component of the building standards of Papua New Guinea.
The updated assessment offers many important advances over its predecessor. It is based on a modern probabilistic hazard framework and considers an earthquake catalogue augmented with an additional four decades-worth of data. The revised assessment considers advances in ground-motion modelling through the use of multiple ground-motion models. Also, for the first time, the individual fault sources representing active major and microplate boundaries are implemented in the input hazard model. Furthermore, the intraslab sources are represented realistically by using the continuous slab volume to constrain the finite ruptures of such events. This would better constrain the expected levels of ground motion at any given site in Papua New Guinea.
The results suggest a high level of hazard in the coastal areas of the Huon Peninsula and the New Britain–Bougainville region, and a relatively low level of hazard in the southern part of the New Guinea Highlands Block. In comparison with the seismic zonation map in the current design standard, it can be noted that the spatial distribution used for building design does not match the bedrock hazard distribution of this study. In particular, the high seismic hazard of the Huon Peninsula in the revised assessment is not captured in the current seismic zoning map, leading to a significant under-estimation of hazard in PNG’s second-largest city, Lae. It can also be shown that in many other regions and community localities in PNG the hazard is higher than that regulated for the design of buildings having a range of natural periods. Thus, the need for an updated hazard map for building design has been confirmed from the results of this study, and a revised map is developed for consideration in a revised building standard of Papua New Guinea.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2020-09-22T14:50:00
- Date (Publication)
- 2020-11-24T04:35:43
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/144371
- Citation identifier
- Digital Object Identifier/http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2020.029
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Author Ghasemi, H.
Author Cummins, P.
Author Weatherill, G.
Author McKee, C.
Author Hazelwood, M.
Author Allen, T.
- Name
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Record
- Issue identification
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RECORD 2020/029
- Purpose
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GA Record
- Status
- Accepted
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Ghasemi, H.
Resource provider Place, Space and Communities Division
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- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
Extent
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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EARTH SCIENCES
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Papua New Guinea
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Earthquake hazard
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Building code
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Pacific Nations
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Hazard Response
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Natural Hazards
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earthquakes
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
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4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
Resource constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
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Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
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Download the Record (pdf) [11.4 MB]
Download the Record (pdf) [11.4 MB]
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pdf
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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Not supplied
Metadata constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
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urn:uuid/c4e07c15-f201-4755-8983-d4ec302eaebd
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GeoNetwork UUID
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Ghasemi, H.
Type of resource
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- Document
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GA publication: GA Record
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/144371
- Date info (Creation)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
- Date info (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551