Journal of Earthquake Engineering, Vol.

6, Special Issue 1 (2002) 4373 c Imperial College Press

DETERMINISTIC VS. PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC HAZARD ASSESSMENT: AN EXAGGERATED AND OBSTRUCTIVE DICHOTOMY

JULIAN J. BOMMER Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2BU, UK Deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment are frequently represented as irreconcilably dierent approaches to the problem of calculating earthquake ground motions for design, each method fervently defended by its proponents. This situation often gives the impression that the selection of either a deterministic or a probabilistic approach is the most fundamental choice in performing a seismic hazard assessment. The dichotomy between the two approaches is not as pronounced as often implied and there are many examples of hazard assessments combining elements of both methods. Insistence on the fundamental division between the deterministic and probabilistic approaches is an obstacle to the development of the most appropriate method of assessment in a particular case. It is neither possible nor useful to establish an approach to seismic hazard assessment that will be the ideal tool for all situations. The approach in each study should be chosen according to the nature of the project and also be calibrated to the seismicity of the region under study, including the quantity and quality of the data available to characterise the seismicity. Seismic hazard assessment should continue to evolve, unfettered by almost ideological allegiance to particular approaches, with the understanding of earthquake processes. Keywords : Seismic hazard; probabilistic seismic hazard assessment; deterministic seismic hazard assessment; seismic risk.

1. Introduction Seismic hazard could be dened, in the most general sense, as the possibility of potentially destructive earthquake eects occurring at a particular location. With the exception of surface fault rupture and tsunami, all the destructive eects of earthquakes are directly related to the ground shaking induced by the passage of seismic waves. Textbooks that present guidance on how to assess the hazard of strong ground-motions invariably present the fundamental choice facing the analyst as that between adopting a deterministic or probabilistic approach [e.g. Reiter, 1990; Krinitzsky et al., 1993; Kramer, 1996]. Statements made by proponents of the two approaches often imply very serious dierences between deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment and reinforce the idea that the choice between them is one of the most important steps in the process of hazard assessment. This paper aims to show that this apparently diametric split between the two approaches is misleading and, more importantly, that it is not helpful to those faced
43

44

J. J. Bommer

with the problem of assessing the hazard presented by earthquake ground motions at a site.

2. DSHA VS. PSHA: An Exaggerated Dichotomy Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) was introduced a little over 30 years ago in the landmark paper by Cornell [1968] and has become the most widely used approach to the problem of determining the characteristics of strong ground-motion for engineering design. Some, however, have challenged the approach and put up vociferous defence of deterministic seismic hazard assessment (DSHA), in turn soliciting rm responses from those favouring PSHA. The division between the two camps has been expressed in the scientic and technical literature, sometimes in terms reminiscent of political debate.a In some situations the division has become public as for example when in October 2000 US newspapers reported the disagreements between Caltrans and the US Army Corps of Engineers regarding the choice of PSHA or DSHA in assessing design loads for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay. Hanks and Cornell [2001] have predicted a similar showdown around the seismic hazard assessment for the Yucca Mountains nuclear waste repository [Stepp et al., 2001]. All of this points to a seemingly irreconcilable split between DSHA and PSHA, which warrants closer examination. 2.1. Determinism and probability in seismic hazard assessment Reiter [1990] and Kramer [1996], currently the most widely consulted textbooks on seismic hazard analysis, describe DSHA in the same way. The basis of DSHA is to develop earthquake scenarios, dened by location and magnitude, which could aect the site under consideration. The resulting ground motions at the site, from which the controlling event is determined, are then calculated using attenuation relations; in some cases, there may be more than one controlling event to be considered in design. The mechanics of PSHA are far less obvious than those of DSHA, with the result that there is often misunderstanding of many of the basic features. The excellent recent papers by Abrahamson [2000] and by Hanks and Cornell [2001] provide very useful clarication of many issues that have created confusion regarding PSHA. The essence of PSHA is to identify all possible earthquakes that could aect a site, including all feasible combinations of magnitude and distance, and to characterise the frequency of occurrence of dierent size earthquakes through a recurrence relationship. Attenuation equations are then employed to calculate the ground-motion parameters that would result at the site due to each of these earthquakes and hence
a The

reader is referred, for example, to the acknowledgements in the paper by Krinitzsky [1998] and the response by Hanks and Cornell [2001].

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

45

the rate at which dierent levels of ground motion occur at the site is calculated. The design values of motion are then those having a particular annual frequency of occurrence. Common to both approaches is the very fundamental, and highly problematic, issue of identifying potential sources of earthquakes. Another common feature is the modelling of the ground motion through the use of attenuation relationships, more correctly called ground-motion prediction equations [D. M. Boore, written communication]. The principle dierence in the two procedures, as described above, resides in those steps of PSHA that are related to characterising the rate at which earthquakes and particular levels of ground motion occur. Hanks and Cornell [2001] point out that the two approaches have far more in common than they do in dierences and that in fact the only dierence is that a PSHA has units of time and DSHA does not. This is indeed a very fundamental distinction between the two approaches as currently practised: in a DSHA the hazard will be dened as the ground motion at the site resulting from the controlling earthquake, whereas in PSHA the hazard is dened as the mean rate of exceedance of some chosen ground-motion amplitude [Hanks and Cornell, 2001]. At this point it is useful to briey dene the dierent terms used to characterise probabilistic seismic hazard: the return period of a particular ground motion, Tr (Y ), is simply the reciprocal of the annual rate of exceedance. For a specied design life, L, of a project, the probability of exceedance of the level of ground motion (assuming that a Poisson model is adopted) is given by: q = 1 e Tr .
L

(1)

Once a mean rate of exceedance or probability of exceedance or return period is selected as the basis for design, the output of PSHA is then expressed in terms of a specied ground motion, in the same way as DSHA. Another important dierence between the two approaches, which is discussed further in Sec. 3, is related to the treatment of hazard due to dierent sources of earthquakes. In PSHA, the hazard contributions of dierent seismogenic sources are combined into a single frequency of exceedance of the ground-motion parameter; in DSHA, each seismogenic source is considered separately, the design motions corresponding to a single scenario in a single source. Regarding dierences and similarities between the two methods, it is often pointed out that probabilities are at least implicitly present in DSHA in so far as the probability of a particular earthquake scenario occurring during the design life of the engineering project is eectively assigned as unity. An alternative interpretation is that within a framework of spatially distributed seismicity, the probability of occurrence of a deterministic scenario is, mathematically, zero [Hanks and Cornell, 2001] but in general the implied probability of one is a valid interpretation of the scenarios dened in DSHA. As regards the resulting ground motions, however, the probability depends upon the treatment of the scatter in the strong-motion prediction equation: if the median plus one standard deviation is

46

J. J. Bommer

used, this will correspond to a motion with a 16-percent probability of exceedance, for the particular earthquake specied in the scenario. The probabilistic nature of ground-motion levels obtained from scaling relationships is reected in the fact that in Japan probabilistic usually refers to ground motions obtained in this way from a particular scenario, as opposed to deterministic ground motions obtained by modelling of the fault rupture and wave propagation [Abrahamson, 2000]. It can equally be pointed out that any PSHA includes many deterministic elements in so much that the denition of nearly all of the input requires the application of judgements to select from a range of possibilities. This applies in particular to the denition of the geographical limits of the seismic sources zones and the selection of the maximum magnitude. The deterministic nature of dening seismic source zones and the consequently great dierences that can arise amongst the interpretations of dierent experts are well known [e.g. Barbano et al., 1989; Reiter, 1990]. In addition to the various parameters that dene the physical model that is the basis for any PSHA, it could also be argued that another parameter, which has a pronounced inuence on the input to engineering design, is also dened deterministically: the design probability of exceedance. This issue, which is of fundamental importance to the raison d etre of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, is explored in Sec. 4. 2.2. From Cornell to kernel boldemdash which PSHA? The nature of the conict between proponents of PSHA and DSHA was previously likened to that between opposing political or religious ideologies, in which each side claims exclusive ownership of the truth. However, scratching the surface of opposing sides in ideological conicts nearly always reveals the division to be far less clear, with divisions within each camp being often almost as pronounced as the fundamental ideological split itself. One only needs to look at the history of the Left in international politics, in which internal conicts have often taken on a ferocity at least as great as that shown in the confrontation with the Right, for a clear example of an apparent dichotomy concealing a multitude of opinions and philosophies.b In this sense, the analogy remains useful for the split between the proponents of DSHA and PSHA: the defendants of PSHA often ignore the fact that there are many dierent methods of analysis that fall under the heading of probabilistic and the proponents of each of these methods argue their case by pointing out shortcomings in the others. The formal beginning of PSHA, as mentioned before, can be traced back to the classic paper by Cornell [1968]. Important developments included the development of the software EQRISK by McGuire [1976], with the result that the method is freb Hence

the joke that if there are three Trotskyists gathered in a room there will be four political

parties.

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

47

quently referred to by the name CornellMcGuire. A signicant dierence between EQRISK and the original formulation of Cornell [1968] was the inclusion of the inuence of the uncertainty or scatter in the strong-motion prediction equation, subsequently explored by Bender [1984]. Two fundamental features of the CornellMcGuire method are denition of seismogenic source zones, as areas or lines, with spatially uniform activity and the assumption of a Poisson process to represent the seismicity, both of which have been challenged by dierent researchers who have proposed alternatives. For example, the use of Markov renewal chains has been proposed as an alternative probabilistic model for subduction zones with identied seismic gaps, to develop either slipdependent [Kiremidjian and Anagnos, 1984] or time-dependent [Kiremdjian and Suzuki, 1987] estimates of hazard. There have also been numerous studies published giving short-term hazard estimates based on non-Poissonian seismicity, such as the forecast by Parsons et al. [2000] for hazard in the Sea of Marmara area following the 1999 Kocaeli and Duzce earthquakes. Many alternatives to uniformly distributed seismicity within sources dened by polygons have been put forward, such as Bender and Perkins [1982, 1987] who proposed sources with smoothed boundaries, obtained by dening a standard error on earthquake locations. In an earlier study Peek et al. [1980] used fuzzy set theory to smooth the transitions between source boundaries. There have also been proposals to do away with source zones altogether and use the seismic catalogue itself to represent the possible locations of earthquakes, an approach that may have been used before 1968. Such historic approaches can be non-parametric [Veneziano et al., 1984] or parametric [Shepherd et al., 1993; Kijko and Graham, 1998]; Makropoulos and Burton [1986] developed an approach using the earthquake catalogue to represent sources and Gumbel distributions. Recent adaptation of these zone-free methods include the approach based on spatiallysmoothed historical seismicity of Frankel [1995] and the kernel method of Woo [1996], who alludes to misgivings over zonation and, consequently, with the edice of hazard computation built on zonation, the cornerstone of the CornellMcGuire method. In these most recent methods, earthquake epicentres in the catalogue are smoothed, according to criteria related to their magnitude and recurrence interval, to form seismic sources. The dierences amongst these dierent approaches to PSHA are not simply academic: Bommer et al. [1998] produced hazard maps for upper-crustal seismicity in El Salvador determined using the CornellMcGuire approach, two zone-free methods and the kernel method. The four hazard maps, prepared using exactly the same input, show very signicant dierences in the resulting spatial distribution of the hazard and the maximum values of PGA vary amongst the four maps by a factor of more than two. Similarly divergent results obtained using the CornellMcGuire and the Frankel [1995] approach have been presented by Wahlstr om and Gr unthal [2000] for Fennoscandanavia.

48

J. J. Bommer

2.3. . . . and which DSHA? Just there are many dierent approaches to PSHA, developed since the publication of Cornell [1968], there is not a single, established and universally accepted approach to DSHA, in part precisely because of the absence of a classic point of reference. Arguably, the recent paper by Krinitzsky [2001], could become the standard reference for DSHA that is currently missing from the technical literature. One important dierence between DSHA as proposed by Krinitzsky [2001] and DSHA as described by Reiter [1990] and Kramer [1996], is that whereas the latter imply that the ground motions for each scenario should be calculated using median (50-percentile) values from strong-motion scaling relationships, Krinizsky [2001] proposes the use of the median-plus-one-standard deviation (84-percentile) values. Confusion regarding the meaning of DSHA is created by the use of the word deterministic to describe scenarios obtained by deaggregation of PSHA, a subject discussed in Sec. 3. Romeo and Prestininizi [2000] obtain design earthquake scenarios by manipulation of magnitude-distance pairs found from deaggregation and refer to these as deterministic reference events ; to add to the confusion, the paper also uses the term in the sense dened in Sec. 2.1, assigning the maximum magnitude earthquake to an active fault. It is sometimes thought that DSHA is mainly applicable to site-specic hazard assessments, but there are examples of deterministic seismic hazard maps, such as those produced by the California Division of Mines and Geology for Caltrans [Mualchin, 1996]. The map is prepared by assigning the maximum credible earthquake (MCE) to each known active or potentially active fault, calculating the resulting ground motions, and mapping contours of the highest values of the chosen ground-motion parameter. Anderson [1997] argues for supplementing probabilistic maps with such deterministic scenario maps to provide insight to what might happen if particular faults actually rupture during the design life of a project. The hazard mapping method developed by Costa et al. [1993] for Italy, and subsequently applied to many other countries [e.g. Alvarez et al., 1999; Aoudia et al., 2000; Panza et al., 1996; Radulian et al., 1996] has also been called deterministic, although it is signicantly dierent from DSHA as described in Sec. 2.1. The method is based on the generation of synthetic accelerograms at the nodes of a grid, from which contours of the peak motions are drawn. One notable feature of the approach is that the choice of grid size results in an arbitrary minimum source-to-site distance of about 15 km, which is hardly a worst-case scenario. 2.4. Combined DSHA and PSHA The apparently irreconcilable contradiction between PSHA and DSHA has not been sucient to prevent their combined use in some recent applications. In common with most seismic design codes, the 1997 edition of the Uniform Building Code (UBC97) denes the design earthquake actions on the basis of a zonation map corresponding to a 475-year return period, used to anchor a response spectrum. Within Zone 4,

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

49

for any site within 15 km of an identied active fault capable of producing an earthquake of M 6.5 or greater, the near source factors Na and Nv are applied to increase the spectral ordinates for the eects of rupture directivity [e.g. Somerville et al., 1997]. Arguably there is a probabilistic element in this procedure since the slip rate is used in addition to the maximum magnitude to classify the fault and thus determine the values of the factors. However, the application of Na and Nv is essentially deterministic: the implicit assumption is that if there is an active fault within 15 km of the site, it will rupture during the design life of the structure and furthermore it will rupture in such a way as to produce forward directivity eects at the site. A more explicit combination of DSHA and PSHA has been used in the preparation of the maximum considered earthquake (for which the acronym MCE is, confusingly, also used) maps for the 1997 NEHRP Recommended Provisions for Seismic Regulations for New Buildings [Leyendecker et al., 2000]. Before continuing, it is important to note here that in this context MCE has a dierent meaning from that within DSHA mentioned above. Most importantly and this is a source for much potential confusion in the DSHA context, the earthquake refers to an event dened by magnitude and location, whereas in PSHA earthquake now refers to the ground motion at the site. Two maps are produced, giving contours of spectral ordinates at 0.2 and 1.0 s, one using PSHA for a probability of exceedance of 2% in 50 years, the other deterministic, using active fault locations and activities combined with median values from strong-motion scaling relations multiplied by a factor of 1.5. Areas are dened on the probabilistic map where the ordinates exceed 1.5g and 0.6g for periods of 0.2 and 1.0 s respectively; within these plateaus, the values from the deterministic map are used instead wherever these are lower than those from the probabilistic map. This process eectively uses DSHA to cap the results of PSHA by not allowing motions higher than those corresponding to a deterministic scenario. Wherever the deterministic values are higher than those from the probabilistic map, the latter are retained; hence, the conclusion is that the probabilistic estimates should not exceed the deterministic estimates, which are eectively considered therefore as an upper bound. The validity of this assumption is questionable, however, in part due to the possibility that a signicant active fault has not been recognised, but more importantly because of the very dierent treatment of uncertainty in the preparation of the two maps, a subject explored further in the next section. 3. Earthquakes, Seismic Actions and Seismic Hazard One of the most fundamental dierences between DHSA and PSHA is the transparency or otherwise of the underlying features of the earthquake processes and in the treatment of the uncertainties associated with current models of these processes. In this section, the two methods are considered with respect to their treatment of uncertainty and their relationship with real earthquake processes.

50

J. J. Bommer

3.1. Earthquake scenarios and seismic actions The rst and most fundamental output from a PSHA is a hazard curve, a plot of the values of the annual rate of exceedance, return period or the probability of exceedance within a particular design life against a selected ground-motion or response parameter (Fig. 1). The values on a hazard curve convey whether the area is of low, moderate or high seismic hazard and its slope may indicate if the larger earthquakes have relatively short or long recurrence intervals. Beyond this, a hazard curve for a single ground-motion parameter tells one almost nothing about the nature of earthquakes likely to aect the site. For a given exceedance probability, the curves imply that the corresponding level of ground motion increases smoothly and continuously with the period of exposure. This is the inevitable result of calculations based on random spatial distribution of earthquakes and a continuous magnitude-frequency relationship. In passing it is worth noting that the validity of the GutenbergRichter recurrence relationship, which forms the backbone of PSHA, has been questioned by several researchers [Krinitzsky, 1993; Speidel and Mattson, 1995; Hofmann, 1996]. Several centuries from now, when some accelerograph stations have been operating for thousands of years, it will be possible to plot the actual variation of average ground-motion parameters with time to observe how well our hazard curves are modelling what actually may happen at any given site. The results will of course be a series of step functions rather than a smooth curve, but if the hazard

Fig. 1. Seismic hazard curves obtained for San Salvador (El Salvador) using the median values from the attenuation relationship and including the integration across the scatter [Bommer et al., 2000].

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

51

Fig. 2. Relationship between magnitude and recurrence intervals for earthquakes of M 7.1 and greater in the Mexican subduction zone [Hong and Rosenblueth, 1988].

Fig. 3. Contours of MMI > VII for upper-crustal earthquakes in and around San Salvador during the last three centuries [Harlow et al., 1993].

52

J. J. Bommer

curve provided a good t to the recorded values this would vindicate PSHA. In the meantime, it is not actually possible to validate the results of a probabilistic seismic hazard assessment. The characteristic earthquake model, in which major faults produce large earthquakes of similar characteristics at more or less constant intervals, is clearly not consistent with the idea that hazard varies gradually with time. The model was originally proposed by Singh et al. [1983] for major events in the Mexican subduction zone, where earthquakes of magnitude above 8 occur quasi-periodically and there is an absence of activity in the magnitude range 7.4 to 8.0 (Fig. 2). The concept of characteristic earthquakes has been subsequently applied to major crustal faults and reinforced by paleoseismology [Schwartz and Coppersmith, 1984]. For a given site aected by a single source with a characteristic earthquake, the ground motion expected at the site will clearly jump by a certain increment when the characteristic earthquake occurs. The concept of characteristic earthquakes may not be limited, however, to large events on plate boundaries and major faults. Main [1987] identied characteristic earthquakes of magnitude about 4.6 in the sequence preceding the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Another example may be the upper-crustal seismicity along the Central American volcanic chain [White and Harlow, 1993]. These destructive events occur at irregular intervals, often in clusters, around the main volcanic centres (Fig. 3). Recurrence relationships derived for the entire volcanic chain clearly indicate a bilinear behaviour, reminiscent of the characteristic model (Fig. 4). The recurrence of these destructive events, sometimes with almost identical locations and characteristics [Ambraseys et al., 2001], obviously suggests itself for a deterministic treatment, as has been done for example in the microzonation study of San Salvador [Faccioli et al., 1988].

Fig. 4. Magnitude-frequency relationships for the Central American volcanic chain using the seismic catalogue for dierent periods: clockwise from top left 18981994, 19311994 and 19641994 [Bommer et al., 1998].

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

53

3.2. Seismic hazard from multiple sources of seismicity In the simple descriptions of DSHA and PSHA given in Sec. 2.1, apart from the fundamental dierence related to the units of time, the most important distinction between the two approaches is in the way the hazard from dierent sources of seismicity are treated. DSHA treats each seismogenic source separately and their inuence on the nal outcome is entirely transparent. PSHA combines the contributions from all relevant sources into a single rate for each level of a particular ground-motion parameter. The consequence is that if the hazard is calculated in terms of a range of parameters, such as spectral ordinates at several periods, the nal results will generally not be compatible with any physically feasible earthquake scenario. In recent years, many deaggregation techniques have been developed to identify the earthquake scenarios that contribute most signicantly to the design motions obtained from PSHA [McGuire, 1995; Chapman, 1995, 1999; Bazzurro and Cornell, 1999; Musson, 1999]. The output of these techniques is often that more than one scenario must be dened in order to match dierent portions of the uniform hazard spectrum (UHS). This is the reason that Romeo and Prestininzi [2000] needed to use an adjusted design earthquake, altering the scenario found by deaggregation, in order for the resulting spectrum not to fall below the UHS. If such manipulation of the scenarios found from deaggregation is required or if dierent scenarios from dierent sources are to be used, this begs the question of why should the inuence of dierent seismogenic sources be combined in the rst place. The answer would appear to lie in the primordial importance that PSHA attaches to the rate of exceedance of ground-motion levels. The total probability theorem requires that all earthquakes contributing to the rate of exceedance of a given ground-motion level be considered simultaneously and therein PSHA creates for itself considerable physical problems for the sake of mathematical rigour. For now let us assume that there is a sound and rigorous basis for the selection of the design probabilities, an assumption that will be revisited later. If many earthquake sources aect a site, and consequently a wide range of M -R scenarios are possible, selecting the design seismic actions at a particular annual frequency may be a rational approach. If, however, characteristic earthquakes are identied, what is the result of this approach? The answer will depend on the relation between the characteristic recurrence interval and the design return period; for large magnitude earthquakes on plate boundaries the result could lie somewhere in the no-mans land above the ground-motion levels from the background seismicity and below the ground motions due to the occurrence of the characteristic event. Let us return to the case of San Salvador (Fig. 4); the historical record over three centuries reveals recurrence intervals of between 2 and 65 years for local destructive earthquakes, with an average of about 22 years [Harlow et al., 1993]. What then is the result of selecting ground motions corresponding to a 475-year return period? Unlike characteristic events on major faults or subduction zones, there is evidently a degree of uncertainty associated with the location of future

54

J. J. Bommer

events, hence a probabilistic approach may help to select an appropriate sourceto-site distance (although it cannot guarantee that the distance for any site in the next earthquake will not actually be shorter). The source-to-site distance of the hazard-consistent scenario has indeed been found to decrease as the return period grows, but the main eect of going to lower and lower probabilities of exceedance is just to add more and more increments of standard deviation to the expected motions from a typical earthquake scenario [Bommer et al., 2000]. 3.3. The issue of uncertainty All seismic hazard assessment, based on our current knowledge of earthquake processes and strong-motion generation, must inevitably deal with very considerable uncertainties. Fundamental amongst these uncertainties are the location and magnitude of future earthquakes: PSHA integrates all possible combinations of these parameters while DSHA assumes the most unfavourable combinations. Another very important element of the uncertainty is that associated with the scatter inherent to strong-motion scaling relationships, which again is treated differently in the two methods. PSHA generally now includes integration across the scatter in the attenuation relationship as part of the calculations, although this has not always been the case: the US hazard study by Algermissen et al. [1982] is based on median values. In DSHA, as noted previously, the scatter is either ignored, by using median values, or accounted for by the addition of one standard deviation to the median values of ground motion. Both approaches have shortcomings, discussed in the next section and also in Sec. 5.3, but it is also important to note here that the dierent treatments of scatter in the two methods questions the validity of the comparisons that are sometimes made between the two. In particular, the use of the deterministic map to cap the ground motions calculated probabilistically in the NEHRP MCE maps, discussed in Sec. 2.4, ignores completely the fact that the deterministic motions are based on median values while the probabilistic values may, for a 2475-year return period, may be related to values more than 1.5 standard deviations above the median [Bommer et al., 2000]. Like is not being compared with like. An important development in the understanding of the nature of uncertainty in strong-motion scaling relationships is the distinction between epistemic and aleatory uncertainty. In very simple terms, the epistemic uncertainty is due to incomplete data and knowledge regarding the earthquake process and the aleatory uncertainty is related to the unpredictable nature of future earthquakes [e.g. Anderson and Brune, 1999]; a more complete denition of epistemic and aleatory uncertainty is provided by Toro et al. [1997]. A major component of the uncertainty is due to all of the parameters that are currently not included in simple strong-motion scaling relationships, whose inclusion would reduce the scatter. Consider equations for duration based on magnitude, distance and site classication: additional parameters that could be included to reduce the scatter are those related to the directivity

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

55

[Somerville et al., 1997] and velocity of rupture, and degree to which the rupture is unilateral or bilateral [Bommer and Martinez-Pereira, 1999]. This would reduce the scatter in the regressions to determine the equations, but it would not necessarily reduce the uncertainty associated with estimates of future ground motions because the point of rupture initiation, and the direction and speed of its propagation, are currently almost impossible to estimate for future events. The reduction of the uncertainty in the strong-motion scaling relationship has simply transferred it to the uncertainty in the other parameters of the hazard model. PSHA would then handle this by considering more and more scenarios to cover all of the possible variations of each feature, whereas DSHA would simply assume their least favourable combination. 3.4. Acceleration time-history representation of seismic hazard The most complete representation of the ground-shaking hazard is an acceleration time-history. The specications for selecting or generating accelerograms in current seismic design codes are generally unworkable, largely because of the representation of the basic design seismic actions in terms of probabilistic maps and uniform hazard spectra [Bommer and Ruggeri, 2002]. The requirement of dynamic analysis for critical, irregular and high ductility structures and the need to dene appropriate input has been one of the main motivations for the development of deaggregation techniques such as Kameda and Nojima [1988], Hwang and Huo [1994], Chapman [1995] and McGuire [1995], the last of which has been widely adopted into practice. Since the PSHA calculations include integration across all possible combinations of magnitude (M ) and distance (R) and also across the scatter in the strong-motion relationships, the deaggregation must dene the earthquake scenario in terms of M , R and , the number of standard deviations above the median. Bommer et al. [2000] have shown that if a single seismogenic source is considered, it is possible to dene the hazard-consistent scenario almost exactly rather than as bins of M , R and values. Performing the deaggregations of hazard determined with and without integration across the scatter reveals interesting features of the way PSHA treats the uncertainty: for a 100 000-year return period, the scenario without scatter is an earthquake of Ms 6.6 at 2 km from the site; with scatter, the scenario becomes an Ms 6.3 earthquake at 6 km, together with 2.7 standard deviations above the median. The implications of this for hazard assessment in general are discussed in Sec. 5.4 but here the interest is to consider the implications for the selection of hazard-consistent real accelerograms for engineering design. In the rst case, records could be searched that approximately match the M -R pair of 6.6 and 2 km; if sucient number of accelerograms were found, the uncertainty would be represented by their own scatter, whereas if only few records were found they could be scaled to account for the uncertainty. That the scatter is inherent in selected suites of accelerograms is reected by specications such as those in the 1999 AASHTO Guidelines for Base-Isolated

56

J. J. Bommer

Bridges : if three records are used in dynamic analysis, the maximum response values are used for design, whereas if more than seven are employed, it is permitted to use the average response. In the case of the second earthquake scenario, one is faced with the almost impossible task of nding records that approximately match the M -R pair of 6.3 and 6 km, for which all ground-motion parameters are simultaneously almost three standard deviations above the median for this M -R scenario. This problem can be overcome by carrying out the hazard assessment considering the joint probabilities of dierent strong-motion parameters [Bazzurro, 1998] but such techniques are some way from being adopted into general practice.

4. Seismic Hazard and Seismic Risk Seismic hazard outside of the context of seismic risk is little more than an academic amusement. The development of better practice is not always well served by papers that present local, regional or even global hazard studies whose intended purpose is never stated or those that propound the virtues of one particular approach or method as the best for all applications. 4.1. Hazard assessment as an element of risk mitigation The seismic risk in the existing built environment may be calculated in order to design nancial (insurance and reinsurance) or physical (retrot and upgrading) mitigation measures. For planned construction, hazard estimates are required so that appropriate measures can be taken to control the consequent levels of risk through relocation (exposure) or earthquake-resistant design (vulnerability). In the case of nancial loss estimation for the purposes of insurance, the probability associated with dierent levels of risk is a vital part of the information required to x premiums and to guide the purchase of reinsurance. In the case of seismic design, of new or existing structures, the target is an acceptable level of risk, for which probability may be needed. In the PSHA approach, once the design probability of exceedance is chosen, it is assumed that design for the corresponding level of ground motion will provide an acceptable level of risk. The important issue is always what is at stake since what matters is the possibility of loss of function due to an earthquake, whether that be to safely house people, to provide rapid transportation, emergency medical care or a constant energy supply, or to contain radioactive material. Krinitzsky [2001] proposes that any project for which the consequences of failure are intolerable, to the owner and/or the users, should be considered critical. There are strong arguments for using a deterministic approach for critical facilities [e.g. Krinitzsky, 1995b] although current DSHA procedures may warrant improvement (Sec. 5.4). The denition of intolerable is, of course, subjective, although it is unlikely that anyone would contend the adjective being applied to the failure of a nuclear power plant. In this context, let us consider the seismicity of Great Britain, which by

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

57

Fig. 5. British earthquakes during the over a period of more than seven centuries. Magnitudes: a: M = 5.5, b: 5.5 > M > 5.0, c: 5.0 > M > 4.5, d: 4.5 > M > 4.0. [Ambraseys and Jackson, 1985].

58

J. J. Bommer

anyones standards is low. Ambraseys and Jackson [1985] review several centuries of seismicity in Britain (Fig. 5) and nd no earthquake larger than Ms 5.5 with the additional blessings that these events are very infrequent recurrence intervals nationally of at least 300 years and that focal depths tend to increase with magnitude. Accounts of losses of life or property due to British earthquakes are hard to come across. This lack of signicant activity and of any consensus on the principles for zoning this seismotectonically inhomogeneous territory [Woo, 1996] has not prevented PSHA being performed. The probabilistic study by Musson and Winter [1997] found 10 000-year PGA values below 0.10g in most of the country but nudging past 0.25g at isolated locations, no doubt in part because of their use of rather high values of maximum magnitude from 6.2 to 7.0. An earlier study by Ove Arup and Partners [1993] found similar results at selected locations and also carried out a probabilistic risk assessment. It was found that annual earthquake losses were only 10% of those due to meteorological hazards, although this was largely the result of the unlikely but still credible scenario of a magnitude 6 earthquake directly under a city [Booth and Pappin, 1995]. A useful, but complex and lengthy, study would compare these probabilistic losses with the cost of incorporating earthquakeresistant design into UK construction, and actually perform an iterative analysis to determine the reduction in risk from dierent levels of investment in earthquakeresistant design and construction. This would allow an informed decision regarding the benet of the investment compared to the loss that may be prevented, taking into account competing demands on the same resources. The issue of seismic safety denitely cannot be dismissed for nuclear power plants built in the UK, for which elaborate probabilistic hazard assessments have been carried out to dene the 10 000-year design ground motions. The real hazard is posed by moderate magnitude [M 5] earthquakes, whose association with tectonic structures is tenuous, that could produce damaging ground motions over a radius of about 510 km. In the authors opinion, unless there is good scientic reasons to exclude it as unfeasible, the only rational design basis for seismic safety in such a setting is a DSHA based on an earthquake of about Ms 5.5, which would require rupture on a fault that could very easily escape detection, occurring close to or even below the power station. This approach could be classied as one of conservatism. In their treatise on the philosophy of seismic hazard assessment for nuclear power plants in the UK, Mallard and Woo [1993] argue against the use conservatism and in favour of a systematic methodology for quantifying uncertainty . The tool proposed for this procedure is the logic-tree, a device that has become part of the stock-in-trade of PSHA enthusiasts. As applied to seismic hazard assessment, the etymology of the second part of its name is obvious from its dendritic structure, but the logic is sometimes harder to detect. 4.2. The use and abuse of probability At this point, three principles for seismic hazard assessment can be stated:

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

59

(1) Seismic hazard can only be rationally interpreted in relation to the mitigation of the attendant risk. (2) If determinism is taken to mean the assignment of values by judgement, it is impossible to perform a seismic hazard assessment, by any method, without many deterministic elements. These should be based, as far as possible, exclusively on the best scientic data available. (3) Probability, at least in a relative sense, is essential to the evaluation of riskc (but not necessarily to its calculation). The application of logic-trees to seismic hazard assessment is a mechanism for handling those epistemic uncertainties that cannot, unlike the aleatory scatter in strong-motion scaling relationships, be statistically measured. The dierent options at each step are considered and each is assigned a subjective weight that reects the condence in each particular value or choice. The results allow the determination of condence bands on the mean hazard curve, which as Reiter [1990] rightly points out, places an uneasy burden on those who have to use the results . Krinitzsky [1995a] presents powerful arguments against the use of logic-tree for hazard assessment, while illustrating how without the contentious application of weights it

Fig. 6. Contours of 475-year PGA levels for El Salvador produced by independent seismic hazard studies [Bommer et al., 1997].

c For

critical structures, any nite probability of failure may be considered intolerable.

60

J. J. Bommer

can be a useful tool for comparing risk scenarios. In the context of this study, and in terms of the three principles outlined above, the logic-tree for hazard assessment appears to be upside down: deterministic judgementsd are turned into numbers and treated together with observational data to calculate probabilities that then x the design ground motions. Returning to the point made in Sec. 3.2, this again points to PSHA having a degree of condence in its probabilities, which, to the author, does not seem justied. Reiter [1990] notes that dierent studies may conict over whether the likelihood of exceeding 0.3g at site X is 103 or 104 and whether the likelihood of exceeding the same acceleration at location Y is 104 or 105 . Given how PSHA is actually applied, this means that for a specied annual rate of exceedance estimates of PGA can vary by factors of two or more (Fig. 6). It is important to note that a degree of this divergence in results can be removed through application of the procedures proposed by the Senior Seismic Hazard Analysis Committee [SSHAC, 1997]. However, the available earthquake and ground-motion data for most parts of the world is such that any estimate of the ground motion for a prescribed rate of exceedance will inevitably carry an appreciable degree of uncertainty. So the big question is, how are the probabilities xed? Hanks and Cornell [2001] explain that the starting point is a performance target expressed as a probability of failure, Pf , which is set by life safety concerns or perhaps political at . This probability is dened by the integral:

Pf =
0

H (a) F (a) da

(2)

where H (a) describes the hazard curve (annual rate of exceedance of dierent levels of acceleration, a), and F (a) is the derivative of the fragility function (the probability of failure given a particular level of acceleration). This is ne if an iterative process is carried out in order determine the appropriate fragility curve, which would then dene the design criteria, to give the desired level of Pf . If the fragility curve is suciently steep, once it has been determined Hanks and Cornell [2001] show how Eq. (2) can be approximated to determine the level of H (a) to be used as the basis of design, although this begins to get complicated because to obtain F (a) the design must already have been carried out. However, this is not how the design levels used in current practice have been xed or else it is quite remarkable that nearly every country in the world, from New Zealand to Ethiopia, regardless of seismicity, building types or construction standards, all came up with 0.002 as the design annual rate of exceedance! In fact, the almost universal use of the 475-year return period in codes can be traced back to the hazard study for the USA produced by Algermissen and Perkins [1976], which was based on an exposure period of 50 years (a typical design life)
d Krinitzsky

[1995a] describes these as degrees of belief that are no more quantiable than love

or taste .

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

61

and a probability of 10% of exceedance, whose selection has not been explained. Every code and regulation since has either followed suit or else adopted its own return periods: Whitman [1989] reports proposals by the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California to use a 2000-year return period, chosen because the committee believed it reected a probability or risk comparable to other risks that the public accepts in regard to life safety . If one considers that in most structural codes the importance factor increases the design ground motions by a constant factor, this means that the actual return period of the design accelerations will be dierent from 475 years and will probably vary throughout a country. In the development of the NEHRP Guidelines, this is actually been done intentionally in order to provide a uniform margin against collapse, resulting in design for motions corresponding to 10% in 50 years in San Francisco and 5% in 50 years in Central and Eastern US [Leyendecker et al., 2000]. A review of seismic design regulations around the world reveals a host of design return periods, the origin of which is rarely if ever explained. The AASHTO Guidelines specify 500 years for essential bridges, 2500 years for critical bridges.e In the Vision 2000 proposal for a framework for performance-based seismic design, return periods of 72, 244, 475 and 974 years have been specied as the basis for xing demand for dierent performance levels [SEAOC, 1995]. It is hard not to feel that some of these values have been almost pulled from a hat, all the more so for the 10 000-year return periods specied for safety-critical structures such as nuclear power plants.

5. The Best of Both Worlds The three principles stated in Sec. 4.2 imply that it is not possible to perform useful seismic hazard assessment that is free from determinism or probability, since both are essential ingredients. Hence it is logical to look for ways that make best use of both these components. 5.1. Hybrid approaches Hanks and Cornell [2001] assert that the main dierence between deterministic and probabilistic approaches is that PSHA has units of time and DHSA does not. This is true in the brief descriptions of the two methods presented at the beginning of the paper but it does not mean that time and probabilities cannot be attached to deterministic scenarios. Orozova and Suhadolc [1999] assign recurrence rates to earthquakes of particular magnitude in order to adapt the method of Costa et al. [1993] discussed in Sec. 2.3 to create a deterministic-probabilistic approach. Furthermore, it is common in loss estimation to model the hazard as a series of earthquake scenarios, each of which is assigned an average rate from the
e A wonderful example occurred in a recent project the design return period was nally xed by the engineer at 2000 years because the bridge was judged to be almost critical !

62

J. J. Bommer

recurrence relationships [e.g. Frankel and Safak, 1998; Kiremidjian, 1999; Bommer et al., 2002]. It has in fact already become well recognised that there is not a mutually exclusive dichotomy between DSHA and PSHA, opening up the possibility of exploring combined methods. Reiter [1990] says that in many situations the choice has been rephrased so that the issue is not whether but rather to what extent a particular approach should be used . McGuire [2001] asserts that determinism vs. probabilism is not a bivariate choice but a continuum in which both analyses are conducted, but more emphasis is given to one over the other . It is, however, interesting to note that both Reiter [1990] and McGuire [2001], who make positive contributions to moving away from the dichotomy, point towards deaggregation of PSHA as an important tool in hybrid approaches. 5.2. Against orthodoxiesf How should the method for seismic hazard assessment be chosen? Reiter [1990] rightly argues that the analysis must t the needs . Nonetheless, there is a tendency amongst many in the eld of earthquake engineering who would argue for the superiority of one approach or the other as the ideal, a panacea for all situations. Such arguments carry the danger of establishing orthodoxies, with all their attendant perils and limitations. Hazard assessment should be chosen and adapted not only to the required output and objectives of the risk study of which it forms part, it should also be adapted to the characteristics of the area where it is being applied and the level and quality of the data available. There is no need to establish standard approaches that may be well suited to some settings and not to others, or which may be appropriate now and yet not be in a few years time as understanding of the earthquake process advances. Every major earthquake that is well recorded by accelerographs throws up new answers and poses new questions, leading to rapid evolution. The near-eld directivity factors proposed by Somerville et al. [1997], for example, have had to be revised not only numerically but also conceptually following the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey and Taiwan, a mere two years after their publication. The ability to locate and identify active geological faults in continental areas has also advanced by leaps and bounds over recent years, and continues to do so [e.g. Jackson, 2001]. What are the bases for the orthodoxies of PSHA and DSHA? For the PSHA church, the cornerstone of its creed seems to be the overriding importance of the probability of exceedance of particular levels of ground motion, despite the fact that teams of experts working with the same data can easily come up with answers
f In

the period 182 to 188 A.D., at a time when the early Christian church had gone beyond only having enemies outside its camp, St. Irenaeus of Lyons penned a multi-tome treatise entitled Adversus Haereses Against Heresies. The eects of such rigid insistence on a particular, narrow philosophy in stiing religious and scientic thought in later centuries are known only too well.

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

63

that dier by an order of magnitude. For the DSHA temple, the sacred cow is the worst-case scenario, even though this is not what they actually produce, as discussed in the Sec. 5.4. The fact is that one cannot get away from the fact that with current levels of knowledge of earthquake processes a major component of seismic hazard assessment is judgement and risk decisions are governed not only by scientic and technical data but also by opinion. The word orthodoxy, from the Greek, has exactly that paradoxical and unscientic meaning: correct (ortho) opinion (doxa). The Oxford Dictionary goes on to dene the word also to mean not independent-minded and unoriginal . 5.3. Alternative approaches to seismic hazard mapping One area in which PSHA currently enjoys almost total domination is in seismic hazard mapping, particularly for seismic design codes. The dierence between deterministic and probabilistic hazard maps highlights one extremely important difference between current practice of the two methods, quite apart from the debatable issue of whether or not units of time are included. Probabilistic maps combine the inuence and eects of dierent sources of seismicity, often into a single map showing contours of PGA that are then used to anchor spectral shapes that relate only to the site conditions and which somehow try to cover all possible earthquake scenarios. Donovan [1993] states that the ground motion portion of codes represents an attempt to produce a best estimate of what ground motions might occur at a site during a future earthquake . Current code descriptions of earthquake actions clearly do not full this objective for many reasons, particularly because of the practice of combining the hazard from various sources of seismicity. Here it is hard to justify this by insisting on the importance of the total probability when codes are generally based on the arbitrary level of the 475-year return period and, even more importantly, a return period which holds only for the zero period spectral ordinate. In fact, because of the use of discrete zones to represent continuously varying hazard over geographical areas, the actual return period will often not correspond to the 475-year level even at the spectral anchor point. The uniform hazard spectra of seismic codes do not represent motions that might occur during a plausible future earthquake, whence the diculties of codes to specify acceleration time-histories. In certain regions, particularly those aected by both small, local earthquakes and larger, distant earthquakes, the application of spectral modal analysis using the code spectrum can amount to designing a long-period structure for two dierent types of earthquake occurring simultaneously. It is important to note here that several codes, and in particular the NEHRP provisions [FEMA, 1997], use two parameters to dene the spectrum, hence the spectral shape does vary with hazard level, but the above comments still apply to some extent. If it is accepted that the total probability theorem is not an inviolable principle in dening earthquake actions, especially when the calculation of that probability

64

J. J. Bommer

is subject to such uncertainty and presented so approximately, more imaginative procedures can be used. The hazard resulting from dierent sources of seismicity can be treated individually and their resulting spectra dened separately. This is, in fact, already done: the seismic design codes of both China and Portugal dene one spectrum for local events and another for more distant large magnitude earthquakes. Once dierent types of seismicity are separated, it will usually be found that at most sites one source dominates. One possibility is then to deaggregate the hazard associated with the dominant source for each site and hence characterise the hazard in terms of actual M -R scenarios. The hazard could then be represented by maps showing contours of M and R for dierent types of seismicity. The problem still remains as to how to select an appropriate return period at which to perform the deaggregation, but in many cases it will be possible to dene the M -R pairs deterministically [Bommer and White, 2001]. This would dier from the maps of magnitude and distance presented by Harmsen et al. [1999] because a single pair of maps would cover all strong-motion parameters rather than just the spectral ordinate at a single response period. Another issue is how to incorporate rationally the uncertainty without going to very complex representations of hazard in terms of M -R- contours [Bazzurro et al., 1998]. The important point is that once the hazard is characterised by pairs of magnitude and distance, every required parameter of the ground motion, including ordinates of spectral acceleration and displacement in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and duration, can be computed directly and the required criteria for selecting or generating acceleration time-histories are provided [Bommer, 2000]. Within the framework of performance-based seismic design it is already envisaged that several levels of earthquake action will be considered in structural design. If the objective is to obtain improved control over earthquake response to expected seismic actions, then it is surely a step in the right direction to begin by separating dierent types of earthquake action. 5.4. Upper bounds : the missing piece In 1971, the San Fernando earthquake more than doubled number of strong-motion accelerograms available, marking the dawn of the age of curve tting to clouds of data to nd scaling relationships. It is curious that the curves tted severely underestimated the most signicant ground-motion recorded in the earthquake (Fig. 7). The scatter in these relationships is generally assumed to be lognormal and is invariably large: for spectral ordinates, the 84-percentile values are typically 80 100% higher than the median. This scatter creates diculties for both DSHA and PSHA. In PSHA the untruncated lognormal scatter results in the probable maximum ground motion at a particular site increasingly indenitely as the time window of the PSHA increases, due to the increasing inuence of the tail of the Gaussian distribution on the probabilistic values [Anderson and Brune, 1999]. This has given rise to dierent mechanisms for truncating the scatter at a certain number of

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

65

Fig. 7. 1987].

Attenuation relationship derived for the 1971 San Fernando earthquake data [Dowrick,

standard deviations above the median, which assumes that for all magnitude and distance combinations, the physical upper bound on the ground motion is always at a xed ratio of the median amplitudes. There is also debate regarding the actual level at which the truncation should be applied: proposals range from 2 to 4.5 standard deviations [Reiter, 1990; Abrahamson, 2000; Romeo and Pristininzi, 2000] and some widely used software codes employ cut-os at 6 standard deviations above the median. Untruncated lognormal distributions create even more diculties for DSHA, since, at least for critical structures, its basis should be to identify the worst-case scenario. Firstly, it establishes a maximum credible earthquake (MCE) as the basis for the design. Abrahamson [2000] points out that if the MCE is determined as the mean value from an empirical relationship between magnitude and rupture dimensions, it is not the worst case; the worst case would be the magnitude at which the probability distribution is truncated. This truncation requires a physical rather than statistical basis: upper bounds are required, especially because the regressions are supported by very few data for large magnitudes [Jackson, 1996].

66

J. J. Bommer

After xing the MCE, DSHA calculates design ground motions as the median or median-plus-one-standard deviation values from strong-motion scaling relationships. Again Abrahamson [2000] points out that this is not the worst case but then goes on to state the worst case ground motion would be 2 to 3 standard deviations above the mean . The problem is where between these two limits to x the worst case? Probabilistically they are close, corresponding to the 97.7 and 99.9 percentiles respectively, although in terms of spectral amplitudes the eect of the third standard deviation thrown on can increase the amplitudes by factors of two, which clearly has very signicant implications for design. Here again, physical upper bounds are needed. Can upper bounds be xed for ground-motion parameters? Reiter [1990] argues that there must be a physical limit on the strength of ground motion that a given earthquake can generate. It is also interesting to note that before sucient strong-motion accelerograms were available for regression analyses, a number of studies considered possible upper bounds on groundmotion parameters [e.g. Ambraseys, 1974; Ambraseys and Hendron, 1967; Ida, 1973; Newmark, 1965; Newmark and Hall, 1969]. Upper bounds need to be established and procedures for their application developed that take into account current understanding of epistemic uncertainty. For example, if a deterministic scenario has included forward directivity eects, does it then make sense to add on two or three standard deviations when a signicant component of the scatter has already been accounted for? There are many ways that the scatter in attenuation equations can be truncated, including the adaptation of models developed for log-normal distributions with nite maxima [Bezdak and Solomon, 1983] to ground-motion prediction models [Restrepo-V elez, 2001]. As PSHA pushes estimates to longer return periods the issue of truncating the inuence of the scatter, in order to avoid physically unrealisable ground-motion amplitudes, becomes more important. The Pegasos project, currently underway to assess seismic hazard at nuclear power plant sites in Switzerland down to very low rates of exceedance, is taking PSHA to new limits [Smit et al., 2002]. The ground-motion estimates will be dened by median values, standard deviations and truncations, with associated condence intervals for each of these, for a wide range of magnitude-range distance pairs. 5.5. Time-dependent estimates of seismic hazard In order to make full use of the output from a PSHA, including estimates of uncertainty and the expected levels of ground motion for a range of return periods, it is necessary that the engineering design also follow a probabilistic approach. Such approaches are now being developed, particularly through the outstanding work of Allin Cornell and his students at Stanford University [e.g. Bazzurro, 1998]. However, there are many obstacles to the adoption of these approaches in routine engineering practice simply because there are few areas of activity where the saying time is money is as true as it is in the construction industry. One could actually conclude

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

67

that probabilistic assessment of design earthquake actions is far more advanced than probabilistic approaches to seismic design and for this reason the results of PSHA are generally not used to their full advantage. The limited time made available for even major engineering projects is reected in the very tight deadlines often set for the execution of seismic hazard assessments. In engineering practice it is not unusual for a hazard assessment for a site to be carried out in a few weeks, generally making it inevitable that the study will be based largely on available data published in papers and reports. Under such circumstances, and especially where the design considers the seismic performance at only one limit state, DSHA can represent an attractive option to dene a level of ground motion that is unlikely to be severely exceeded. One advantage of DSHA is that it immediately releases the hazard analyst from the responsibility of dening the design return period, which the client or engineer often passes, quite incorrectly, to the Earth scientist. More importantly, DSHA is generally more dependent on the data that is likely to be determined most reliably: the characteristics of the largest historical earthquakes and the location of the largest geological faults. Since the actual calculations involved in DSHA are simple, the analyst can carry out sensitivity analyses even when working to a very strict timetable. Furthermore, because of the transparency of the deterministic approach, peer review can be carried out swiftly and easily, which may not be the case for a probabilistic assessment where so many input parameters and assumptions, whose individual inuences are often dicult to distinguish, need to be dened. One cannot escape from the fact that expert opinion is of overriding importance, regardless of whether the probabilistic or deterministic approach is adopted. The value of a logic-tree formulation, with weights assigned by one analyst, in situations where the design engineer for whom the provision of earthquake resistance is just one of a series of considerations that aect siting, dimensions and detailing is seeking a single number to characterise the earthquake action, is questionable. This is not to say that careful use of multiple expert opinions is not to be encouraged, indeed a Level 4 hazard study as recommended by SSHAC [1997] provides a very well crafted framework for exactly such a process. However, the time scale, and hence cost, required to perform such a study is beyond the means and the schedule of most engineering projects: to date the SSHAC Level 4 method has only be applied in the Yucca Mountains project [Stepp et al., 2001] and now the Pegasos project in Switzerland [Smit et al., 2002]. When working to a very short time scale, however, a peer-reviewed DSHA may be far more useful to the project engineer and ultimately to the provision of an adequate level of earthquake resistance. 6. Conclusions There is not a simple dichotomy between probabilistic and deterministic approaches to seismic hazard assessment many dierent probabilistic approaches exist and there is not a standard methodology for deterministic approaches. There is not,

68

J. J. Bommer

nor does there need to be, a method that can be applied as a panacea in all situations, since the available time and resources, and the required output, will vary for dierent applications. There is no reason why a single approach should be ideal for drafting zonation maps for seismic design codes, for loss estimation studies in urban areas, for emergency planning, and for site-specic assessments for nuclear power plants. McGuire [2001] presents an interesting scheme for selecting the relative degrees of determinism and probabilism according to the application. Woo [1996] states that the method of (probabilistic) analysis should be decided on the merits of the regional data rather than the availability of particular software or the analysts own philosophical inclination. The reality is that both of these views are partially correct and hence both criteria need to be used simultaneously: the selection of the appropriate method must t the requirements of the application and also consider the nature of the seismicity in the region and its correlation or indeed lack thereof with the tectonics. It is not possible to dene a set of criteria that can then be blindly applied to all types of hazard assessment in all regions of the world and for this reason no such attempt has been made in this paper. The analyst, after establishing the needs and conditions set by the engineer, should adapt the assessment both to these criteria and to the region under study. Casting aside simplistic choices between DSHA and PSHA will help the best approach to be found and will also allow the best use to be made of the considerable and growing body of expertise in engineering seismology around the world. The condence with which seismic probabilities can be calculated does not generally warrant their rigid use to dene design ground motions and wherever possible the results should at least be checked against deterministic scenarios, wherever there is sucient data for these to be dened [McGuire, 2001]. One application in which the arguments for strict adherence to the total probability theorem cannot be defended is in the derivation of earthquake actions for code-based seismic design. The currently very crude denition of earthquake actions in seismic codes could be greatly improved if it was accepted that it is not necessary to use representations that attempt to simultaneously envelope all of the possible ground motions that may occur at a site. Finally, one area in which research is required, that will be of benet to seismic hazard assessment in general and perhaps in particular to deterministic approaches, is to identify upper bounds on ground-motion parameters for dierent combinations of magnitude, distance and rupture mechanism. The existing database of strongmotion accelerograms can provide some insight into this issue [e.g. Mart nez-Pereira, 1999; Restrepo-V elez, 2001]. Advances in nite fault models for numerical simulation of ground motions could be employed to perform large numbers of runs, with a wide range of combinations of physically realisable values of the independent parameters, in order to obtain estimates of the likely range of the upper bounds on some parameters.

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

69

Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank David M. Boore, Luis Fernando Restrepo-V elez, John Douglas and John Berrill for heads up regarding some key references, and particularly to Ellis Krinitzsky and Tom Hanks for providing pre-prints of papers. The author has enjoyed and beneted from discussing many of the issues in this paper with others, particularly Norman A. Abrahamson, Amr Elnashai, Rui Pinho, Nigel Priestley, Sarada K. Sarma and the students of the ROSE School in Pavia. Robin McGuire, Bel en Benito, John Douglas, Nick Ambraseys and Sarada Sarma all provided very useful feedback on the rst draft of this manuscript. The author is particularly indebted to Dave Boore for an extremely thorough, detailed and challenging review of the rst draft; in the few cases where my determined stubbornness has led me to ignore his counsel, I have probably done so to the detriment of the paper. The second draft of the paper has further beneted from thorough reviews by John Berrill and two anonymous referees, to whom I also extend my gratitude. References
Abrahamson, N. A. [2000] State of the practice of seismic hazard evaluation, GeoEng 2000, Melbourne, Australia, 1924 November. Algermissen, S. T. and Perkins, D. M. [1976] A probabilistic estimate of maximum accelerations in rock in the contiguous United States, US Geological Survey Open-File Report 76416. Algermissen, S. T., Perkins, D. M., Thenhaus, P. C., Hanson, S. L. and Bender, B. L. [1982] Probabilistic estimates of maximum acceleration and velocity in rock in the contiguous United States, US Geological Survey Open-File Report 821033. Alvarez, L., Vaccari, F., and Panza, G. F. [1999] Deterministic seismic zoning of eastern Cuba, Pure Appl. Geophys. 156, 469486. Ambraseys, N. N. [1974] Dynamics and response of foundation materials in epicentral regions of strong earthquakes, Proceedings Fifth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Rome, vol. 1, cxxvi-cxlviii. Ambraseys, N. N., Bommer, J. J., Buforn, E. and Ud as A. [2001] The earthquake sequence of May 1951 at Jucuapa, El Salvador, J. Seism. 5(1), 2339. Ambraseys, N. N. and Hendron, A. [1967] Dynamic Behaviour of Rock Masses. Rock Mechanics in Engineering Practice, Stagg, K. and Zienkiewicz, O. (eds.), John Wiley, pp. 203236. Ambraseys, N. N. and Jackson, J. A. [1985] Long-term seismicity of Britain, Earthquake Engineering in Britain, Thomas Telford, pp. 4965. Anderson, J. G. [1997] Benets of scenario ground motion maps, Engrg. Geol. 48, 4357. Anderson, J. G. and Brune, J. N. [1999] Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis without the ergodic assumption, Seism. Res. Lett. 70(1), 1928. Aoudia, A., Vaccari, F., Suhadolc, P. and Megrahoui, M. [2000] Seismogenic potential and earthquake hazard assessment in Tell Atlas of Algeria, J. Seism. 4, 7998. Barbano, M. S, Egozcue, J. J., Garc a Fern` andez, M., Kijko, A., Lapajne, L., Mayer-Rosa, D., Schenk, V., Schenkova, Z., Slejko, D. and Zonno, G. [1989] Assessment of seismic hazard for the Sannio-Matese area of southern Italy a summary, Natural Hazards 2, 217228.

70

J. J. Bommer

Bazzurro, P. [1998] Probabilistic seismic demand analysis, PhD Dissertation, Stanford University. Bazzurro, P. and Cornell, C. A. [1999] Disaggregation of seismic hazard, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 89, 501520. Bazzurro, P., Winterstein, S. R. and Cornell, C. A. [1998] Seismic contours: a new characterization of seismic hazard, Proc. Eleventh European Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Paris. Bender, B. [1984] Incorporating acceleration variability into seismic hazard analysis, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 74, 14511462. Bender, B. and Perkins, D. M. [1982] SEISRISK II, A computer program for seismic hazard estimation, US Geological Survey Open-File Report 82293. Bender, B. and Perkins, D. M. [1987] SEISRISK III, A computer program for seismic hazard estimation, US Geol. Surv. Bull. 1772, 120. Bezdek, J. C. and Solomon, K. H. [1983] Upper limit lognormal distribution for drop size data, ASCE J. Irrigation and Drainage Engrg. 109(1), 7288. Bommer, J. J. [2000] Seismic zonation for comprehensive denition of earthquake actions, Proceedings Sixth International Conference on Seismic Zonation, Palm Springs, CA. Bommer, J. J. and Mart nez-Pereira, A. [1999] The eective duration of earthquake strong motion, J. Earthq. Engrg. 3(2), 127172. Bommer, J. J. and Ruggeri, C. [2002] The specication of acceleration time-histories in seismic design codes, Eur. Earthq. Engrg., 16(1), in press. Bommer, J. J. and White, N. [2001] Una propuesta para un mtodo alternativo de zonicaci on s smica en los pa ses de Iberoam erica, Segundo Congreso Iberoamericano de Ingenier a S smica, Madrid, 1619 October. Bommer, J., McQueen, C., Salazar, W., Scott, S. and Woo, G. [1998] A case study of the spatial distribution of seismic hazard (El Salvador), Natural Hazards 18, 145166. Bommer, J. J., Scott, S. G. and Sarma, S. K. [2000] Hazard-consistent earthquake scenarios, Soil Dyna. Earthq. Engrg. 19, 219231. Bommer, J., Spence, R., Erdik, M., Tabuchi, S., Aydinoglu, N., Booth, E., del Re, D. and Peterken, O. [2002] Development of an earthquake loss model for Turkish Catastrophe Insurance, J. Seism., accepted for publication. Bommer, J. J., Ud as, A., Cepeda, J. M., Hasbun, J. C., Salazar, W. M., Su arez, A., Ambraseys, N. N., Buforn, E., Cortina, J., Madariaga, R., M` endez, P., Mezcua, J. and Papastamatiou, D. [1997] A new digital accelerograph network for El Salvador, Seism. Res. Lett. 68, 426437. Booth, E. D. and Pappin, J. W. [1995] Seismic design requirements for structures in the United Kingdom, European Seismic Design Practice, A. S. Elnashai (ed.), Balkema, 133140. Chapman, M. C. [1995] A probabilistic approach to ground-motion selection for engineering design, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 85, 937942. Chapman, M. C. [1999] On the use of elastic input energy for seismic hazard analysis, Earthq. Spectra 15, 607635. Cornell, C. A. [1968] Engineering seismic risk analysis, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 58, 15831606. Costa, G., Panza, G. F., Suhadolc, P. and Vaccari, F. [1993] Zoning of the Italian territory in terms of expected peak ground acceleration derived from complete synthetic seismograms, J. Appl. Geophys. 30, 149160. Donovan, N. [1993] Relationship of seismic hazard studies to seismic codes in the United States, Tectonophysics 218, 257271.

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

71

Dowrick, D. J. [1987] Earthquake Resistant Design for Engineers and Architects. Second edition, John Wiley & Sons. Faccioli, E., Battistella, C., Alemani, P. and Tibaldi, A. [1988] Seismic microzoning investigations in the metropolitan area of San Salvador, El Salvador, following the destructive earthquake of 10 October 1986, Proceedings International Seminar on Earthquake Engineering, Innsbruck, 2865. FEMA [1997] NEHRP recommended provisions for seismic regulations for new buildings and other structures, FEMA 302, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington DC. Frankel, A. [1995] Mapping seismic hazard in the Central and Eastern United States, Seism. Res. Lett. 66(4), 821. Frankel, A. and Safak, E. [1998] Recent trends and future prospects in seismic hazard analysis, Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering & Soil Dynamics III, ASCE Geotechnical Special Publication 75, 1, 91115. Hanks, T. C. and Cornell, C. A. [2001] Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis: a beginners guide, Earthq. Spectra, submitted. Harlow, D. H., White, R. A., Rymer, M. J. and Alvarado, S. G. [1993] The San Salvador earthquake of 10 October 1986 and its historical context, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 83(4), 11431154. Harmsen, S., Perkins, D. and Frankel, A. [1999] Deaggregation of probabilistic ground motions in the Central and Eastern United States, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 89, 113. Hofmann, R. B. [1996] Individual faults cant produce a Gutenberg-Richter earthquake recurrence, Engrg. Geol. 43, 59. Hong, H. P. and Rosenblueth, E. [1988] The Mexico earthquake of September 19, 1985 model for generation of subduction earthquakes, Earthq. Spectra 4(3), 481498. Hwang, H. H. M. and Huo, J. R. [1994] Generation of hazard-consistent ground motion, Soil Dyn. Earthq. Engrg. 13, 377386. Ida, Y. [1973] The maximum acceleration of seismic ground motion, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 63(3), 959968. Jackson, D. D. [1996] The case for huge earthquakes, Seism. Res. Lett. 67(1), 35. Jackson, J. A. [2001] Living with earthquakes: know your faults, J. Earthq. Engrg. 5, Special Issue No. 1, 5123. Kameda, H. and Nojima, N. [1988] Simulation of risk-consistent earthquake motion, Earthq. Engrg. Struct. Dyn. 16, 10071019. Kijko, A. and Graham, G. [1998] Parametric-historic procedure for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, Proceedings Eleventh European Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Paris. Kiremidjian, A. S. [1999] Multiple earthquake event loss estimation methodology, Proceedings of the Eleventh European Conference on Earthquake Engineering: Invited Lectures. Balkema, pp. 151160. Kiremidjian, A. S. and Anagnos, T. [1984] Stochastic slip-predictable models for earthquake occurrence, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 74, 739755. Kiremidjian, A. S. and Suzuki, S. [1987] A stochastic model for site ground motions from temporally independent earthquakes, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 77, 11101126. Kramer, S. L. [1996] Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Prentice Hall. Krinitzsky, E. L. [1993] Earthquake probability in engineering Part 2: Earthquake recurrence and limitations of Gutenberg-Richter b-values for the engineering of critical structures, Engrg. Geol. 36, 152. Krinitzsky, E. L. [1995a] Problems with Logic Trees in earthquake hazard evaluation, Engrg. Geol. 39, 13.

72

J. J. Bommer

Krinitzsky, E. L. [1995b] Deterministic versus probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for critical structures, Engrg. Geol. 40, 17. Krinitzsky, E. L. [1998] The hazard in using probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for engineering, Env. Engrg. Geosci. 4(4), 425443. Krinitzsky, E. L. [2001] How to obtain earthquake ground motions for engineering design, Engrg. Geosci., submitted. Krinitzsky, E. L., Gould, J. P. and Edinger, P. H. [1993] Fundamentals of Earthquake Resistant Construction, Wiley. Leyendecker, E. V., Hunt, R. J., Frankel, A. D. and Rukstales, K. S. [2000] Development of maximum considered earthquake ground motion maps, Earthq. Spectra 16, 2140. Main, I. G. [1987] A characteristic earthquake model of the seismicity preceding the eruption of Mount St. Helens on 18 May 1980, Phys. Earth Planetary Interiors 49, 283293. Makropoulos, K. C. and Burton, P. W. [1986] HAZAN: a FORTRAN program to evaluate seismic hazard parameters using Gumbels theory of extreme value statistics, Comput. Geosci. 12, 2946. Mallard, D. J. and Woo, G. [1993] Uncertainty and conservatism in UK seismic hazard assessment, Nuclear Energy 32(4), 199205. McGuire, R. K. [1976] FORTRAN computer program for seismic risk analysis, US Geological Survey Open-File Report 7667. McGuire, R. K. [1995] Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and design earthquakes: closing the loop, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 85, 12751284. McGuire, R. K. [2001] Deterministic vs. probabilistic earthquake hazard and risks, Soil Dyn. Earthq. Engrg. 21, 377384. Mualchin, L. [1996] Development of Caltrans deterministic fault and earthquake hazard map of California, Engrg. Geol. 42, 217222. Musson, R. M. W. [1999] Determination of design earthquakes in seismic hazard analysis through Monte Carlo simulation, J. Earthq. Engrg. 3(4), 463474. Musson, R. M. W. and Winter, P. W. [1997] Seismic hazard maps for the UK, Natural Hazards 14, 141154. Newmark, N. M. [1965] Eects of earthquakes on dams and embankments, G eotechnique 15(2), 139160. Newmark, N. M. and Hall, W. J. [1969] Seismic design criteria for nuclear reactor facilities, Proceedings Fourth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Santiago de Chile, vol. 2, B5.1B5.12. Orozova, I. M. and Suhadolc, P. [1999] A deterministic-probabilistic approach for seismic hazard assessment, Tectonophysics 312, 191202. Ove Arup and Partners [1993] Earthquake hazard and risk in the UK. Her Majestys Stationery Oce, London. Panza, G. F., Vaccari, F., Costa, G., Suhadolc, P. and Fah, D. [1996] Seismic input modelling for zoning and microzoning, Earthq. Spectra 12, 529566. Parsons, T., Roda, S., Stein, R. S, Barka, A. and Dietrich, J. H. [2000] Heightened odds of large earthquakes near Istanbul: an interaction-based probability calculation, Science 288, 28 April, 661665. Peek, R., Berrill, J. B. and Davis, R. O. [1980] A seismicity model for New Zealand, Bull. New Zealand Nat. Soc. Earthq. Engrg. 13(4), 355364. Radulin, M., Vaccari, F., Mandrescu, N., Panza, G. F. and Moldoveanu, C. L. [2000] Seismic hazard of Romania: deterministic approach, Pure Appl. Geophys. 157, 221248.

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

73

Reiter, L. [1990] Earthquake Hazard Analysis: Issues and Insights, Columbia University Press. Restrepo-V elez, L. F. [2001] Explorative study of the scatter in strong-motion attenuation equations for application to seismic hazard assessment, Master Dissertation, ROSE School, Universita di Pavia. Romeo, R. and Prestininzi, A. [2000] Probabilistic versus deterministic hazard analysis: an integrated approach for siting problems, Soil Dyn. Earthq. Engrg. 20, 7584. Schwartz, D. P. and Coppersmith, K. J. [1984] Fault behaviour and characteristic earthquakes: examples from the Wasatch and San Andreas faults, J. Geophys. Res. 89, 56815698. SEAOC [1995] Vision 2000 A framework for performance based design. Structural Engineers Association of California, Sacramento. Shepherd, J. B., Tanner, J. G. and Prockter, L. [1993] Revised estimates of the levels of ground acceleration and velocity with 10% probability of exceedance in any 50-year period for the Trinidad and Tobago region, Caribbean Conference on Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Windstorms and Floods, 1115 October, Port of Spain, Trinidad. Singh, S. K., Rodriguez, M. and Esteva, L. [1983] Statistics of small earthquakes and frequency of occurrence of large earthquakes along the Mexican subduction zone, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 73, 17791796. Speidel, D. H. and Mattson, P. H. [1995] Questions on the validity and utility of b-values: an example from the Central Mississippi Valley, Engrg. Geol. 40, 927. Somerville, P. G., Smith, N. F., Graves, R. W. and Abrahamson, N. A. [1997] Modication of empirical strong ground motion attenuation relations to include the amplitude and duration eects of rupture directivity, Seism. Res. Lett. 68, 199222. SSHAC [1997] Recommendations for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis: guidance on uncertainty and the use of experts. Senior Seismic Hazard Analysis Committee, NUREG/CR-6372, Washington, DC. Smit, P., Torri, A., Sprecher, C., Birkhauser, P., Tinic, S. and Graf, R. [2002] Pegasos a comprehensive probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for nuclear power plants in Switzerland, Twelfth European Conference on Earthquake Engineering, London. Stepp, J. C., Wong, I., Whitney, J., Quittmeyer, R., Abrahamson, N., Toro, G., Youngs, R., Coppersmith, K., Savy, J., Sullivan, T. and Yucca Mountain PSHA Project Members [2001] Probabilistic seismic hazard analyses for ground motions and fault displacements at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Earthq. Spectra 17(1), 113151. Toro, G. R., Abrahamson, N. A. and Scheider, J. F. [1997] Model of strong ground motions from earthquakes in Central and Eastern North America: best estimates and uncertainties, Seism. Res. Lett. 68(1), 4157. Veneziano, D., Cornell, C. A. and OHara, T. [1984] Historical method of seismic hazard analysis, Electrical Power Research Institute Report NP-3438 , Palo Alto, California. White, R. A. and Harlow, D. H. [1993] Destructive upper-crustal earthquakes of Central America since 1900, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 83(4), 11151142. Whitman, R. (ed.) [1989] Workshop on ground motion parameters for seismic hazard mapping, Technical Report NCEER-89-0038, National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, State University of New York at Bualo. Woo, G. [1996] Kernel estimation methods for seismic hazard area source modelling, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 86, 353362. Wahlstr om, R. and Gr unthal, G. [2000] Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (horizontal PGA) for Sweden, Finland and Denmark using dierent logic tree approaches, Soil Dyn. Earthq. Engrg. 20, 4558.