Assessment of the Relative Largest Earthquake Hazard Level in the NW Himalaya and its Adjacent Region

Abstract

In the present study, the level of the largest earthquake hazard is assessed in 28 seismic zones of the NW Himalaya and its vicinity, which is a highly seismically active region of the world. Gumbel's third asymptotic distribution (hereafter as GIII) is adopted for the evaluation of the largest earthquake magnitudes in these seismic zones. Instead of taking in account any type of Mmax, in the present study we consider the ω value which is the largest earthquake magnitude that a region can experience according to the GIII statistics. A function of the form Θ(ω, RP6.0) is providing in this way a relatively largest earthquake hazard scale defined by the letter K(K index). The return periods for the ω values (earthquake magnitudes) 6 or larger (RP6.0) are also calculated. According to this index, the investigated seismic zones are classified into five groups and it is shown that seismic zones 3 (Quetta of Pakistan), 11 (Hindukush), 15 (northern Pamirs), and 23 (Kangra, Himachal Pradesh of India) correspond to a "very high" K index which is 6.