An updated seismic hazards and seismotectonic studies for Sinai Peninsula, Egypt

Sinai Peninsula is located in western Asia in northeastern Egypt. It is characterized by its numerous resources such as coal, hydrocarbon, uranium and thorium. In south Sinai, the Red Sea bifurcates into the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, which are characterized by moderate to high seismic activity and the presence of earthquake swarms. To preserve mineral and petroleum reserves, protect facilities, and eliminate any potential losses, the seismic hazard is evaluated using the probabilistic and deterministic techniques. Historical and recent earthquakes were collected into a complete homogenous catalog and the study area was divided into 39 seismic sources plus a background seismic source to build a seismotectonic source model taking into account the impact of local and regional seismicity on Sinai. The recurrence parameters were estimated for each source and alternative attenuation relationships were used to account for epistemic uncertainty. Hazard maps were created to indicate the ground motion on bed rock. The probabilistic hazard maps were created to show ground motion at 475-years return period while the deterministic maps show acceleration at the 50th percentile level for the selected probabilities of exceedance. Uniform hazard spectra and deaggregation of hazards were estimated for some cities in Sinai. Some earthquakes were stochastically simulated to study the effect of magnitude and distance to some cities on acceleration values. In addition, synthetic accelerograms have been created to assist earthquake engineers in performing nonlinear dynamic analysis of buildings. The results of this study are very important in seismic risk assessment and engineering studies.