Central Asia (EMCA)

Taking advantage of the COSERICA consortium created during the CASCADE project, the Earthquake Model Central Asia (EMCA) aims at cross-border assessment of seismic hazard and risk in Central Asia [Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan], by working together with institutions and experts in the region.

The programme is coordinated by GFZ Potsdam and has an initial 3-year duration [2011-2014].

Activities are divided into 3 modules:

1. Seismic Hazard Assessment and Microzonation
2. Seismic Vulnerability
3. Earthquake Risk

Seismic Hazard Assessment and Microzonation
Within EMCA, seismic hazard assessment is going to be carried out by considering different approaches and parameters. In particular, cross border seismic hazard maps in terms of intensity and parameters that are of interest to engineers will be calculated using a single approach (Albarello and Mucciarelli, 2002), a spatially smoothed seismicity approach (Frankel, 1995) and a standard Cornell approach (Cornell, 1968). Input data will be organised following GEM standards and calculations will be carried out, taking advantage of the OpenQuake software (and OpenGEM platform). In areas of intensive urbanisation (capitals and other major cities), microzonation activities will be conducted and the results will be considered for hazard and risk assessment. The microzonation of Bishkek has already been carried out recently (Parolai et. al., 2010) and in other towns such as Tashkent, Almaty and Dushanbe the work has started. 

Seismic Vulnerability
A workshop held in Almaty in 1996 on "Earthquake Risk Management Strategies for Post-Soviet Central Asian Republics" (King, Khalturin and Tucker, 1999) pointed out that seismic resistance of Soviet-era buildings was significantly lower than was officially proclaimed. As millions of people throughout Central Asia live in such buildings, it is essential to gather and harmonise data on physical vulnerability. First vulnerability data sets of different countries will be harmonised, attempting a uniform re-classification of the building stock in terms of the EMS98 scale. The possibility of developing a harmonized vulnerability classification scheme for Central Asia will be evaluated during the project.

Furthermore the use of remote sensing and other imaging sources will be tested and applied, in full compliance with the aim of the global component project on inventory data capture tools. In this context, the development of new IT-tools are foreseen, for efficient data extraction from satellite and omni-directional images. A first test is already ongoing in Bishkek and a new data acquisition campaign is planned for the spring/summer of 2011 in Dushanbe (Tajikistan).

Data obtained will be rendered available for GEM's global databases.

Earthquake Risk
The outcomes of the Hazard and Vulnerability modules will be combined for a harmonized assessment of the seismic risk in Central Asia. Depending on the amount of detail characterizing the input information, the seismic risk will be evaluated at different spatial scale, ranging from regional to urban scales.

Furthermore, the monitoring of the vulnerability changes will be considered when tracking temporal changes in the risk estimations. Starting from and further developing the approach applied for a preliminary risk assessment of Bishkek (Bindi et al., 2011), the results of the microzonation studies will be exploited for introducing local site amplification effects in the hazard maps.

Computation of the risk in terms of damage levels and losses will be performed by applying the CREST (Cedim Risk Estimation Tool) software and by means of using the OpenQuake software.

Website
http://www.emca-gem.org/

Contacts
Responsible: Jochen Zschau
Project Coordinator: Stefano Parolai; parolai[at]gfz-potsdam.de.