STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF RESERVOIR INDUCED SEISMICITY AT A RESERVOIR SITE

Abstract

This paper presents a statistical probability method to find the probability of a particular intensity of earthquake at a reservoir site which can be used to assign degree of risk associated with the site. Reservoir impoundment at certain sites leads to increase seismicity at the site which makes the structures in the vicinity of the reservoir vulnerable to earthquake forces which might not have been considered according to conventional seismic design, thus it becomes important to include the effect of Reservoir Induced Seismicity (RIS) in the design of structure which are in proximity to the reservoir site. So we are presenting a modified earthquake design for a site which is suspected to be in the category of RIS by using additional parameters along with conventional parameters of earthquake design. The nature of our design where seismicity have been induced due to reservoir impoundment is a slightly different from tectonic earthquake design considering the fact that this particular design is well supplemented with a rational statistical analysis hence requiring us to design the structures for increased design forces to fulfil the basic earthquake design criteria.