干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

For the last decade the Egyptian government has planned to implement the Tushka project at the southeastern part of the western Desert. This project includes the construction of a number of new cities. Tushka New City is one of these cities. Tushka area has a complex tectonic and geological history. Although no historical earthquakes are known to have occurred in the Tushka area, five large earthquakes of magnitude between 5.1 and 6.2 were recently observed from four active zones located around Tushka area. In addition to these four zones many microearthquakes have been detected in and around Tushak area. The main purpose of this research is to elucidate the seismicity and estimate the seismic hazard due to this activity in the study area.

According to the spatial distribution of earthquakes that located in and around the study area, 9 seismic zones are defined on the seismotectonic map. For each seismic zone the seismic hazard parameters are estimated and used as input data for seismic hazard analysis. The resulting probability distributions are taken to produce iso-acceleration map for specific periods and economic life of public structures. The hazard at the proposed Tushka New City site is given by the hazard curve that is represented by the relationship between the peak ground acceleration and its annual exceedance probability. The maximum peak ground acceleration is 49, 137, 157 and 177 cm/s(2) (gal) for zones Z-1, Z-6, Z-9 and Z-4 respectively. Although the values of PGA in zones Z-4, Z-6 and Z-9 are almost the same, Z-4 has a significant effect on the proposed Tushka New City site due to its location about 140 km northeast to the study area, while the calculated maximum acceleration with 90 percent probability of not being exceeded in 50 years of exposure time (475 years return period) at the proposed Tushka New City site was about 22 cm/s(2).