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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
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

Ghasemi, H.

Author

Cummins, P.

Author

Weatherill, G.

Author

McKee, C.

Author

Hazelwood, M.

Author

Allen, T.

Name

Record

Issue identification

RECORD 2020/029

Purpose

GA Record

Status
Accepted
Point of contact
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

Spatial representation type
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

Extent

Maintenance and update frequency
As needed

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Website

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
  • EARTH SCIENCES

{1}
  • Papua New Guinea

{1}
  • Earthquake hazard

{1}
  • Building code

{1}
  • Pacific Nations

{1}
  • Hazard Response

{1}
  • Natural Hazards

{1}
  • earthquakes

{1}
  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
License

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
OnLine resource

Download the Record (pdf) [11.4 MB]

Download the Record (pdf) [11.4 MB]

Distribution format
  • pdf

Resource lineage

Statement

Not supplied

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/c4e07c15-f201-4755-8983-d4ec302eaebd

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Point of contact

Ghasemi, H.

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

GA publication: GA Record

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/144371

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/5167d912-6784-4371-9938-3931e84ca6f1

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au:80/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/c4e07c15-f201-4755-8983-d4ec302eaebd

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/c4e07c15-f201-4755-8983-d4ec302eaebd

Date info (Creation)
2019-04-08T01:55:29
Date info (Revision)
2019-04-08T01:55:29

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

Keywords

Building code Earthquake hazard Hazard Response Natural Hazards Pacific Nations Papua New Guinea Published_External earthquakes
theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
EARTH SCIENCES

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