Site-specific probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for earthquake-resistant design at new urban communities in Egypt

Abstract Egypt has adopted long-term strategies for urbanizing new cities across the country for resolving the overwhelming problem of overcrowded cities. New Mallawi is an example of such new cities. Egypt is occasionally being shaken by big-sized earthquakes such as the destructive 1754 local Cairo event and the strong ( 1995) Gulf of Aqaba earthquake; therefore, the buildings need to be designed to withstand the shaking of future damaging events. The hazard model of this research is based on an up-to-date catalogue of earthquakes. To obtain realistic results, lateral changes in soil characteristics are considered through using the parameter of average shear-wave velocity in near-surface layers. In addition, different state-of-the-art formulations of declustering temporal and spatial windows are used to represent the epistemic uncertainty in earthquake recurrence functions. Moreover, a set of ground motion models is used for better consideration of the uncertainty of the empirical estimates, and uncertainty in maximum earthquake size is treated. The resulting earthquake shaking is rather low, and the observed variability is affected by lateral changes in soil properties. Various hazard levels are investigated for reaching a better earthquake-resistant design that accounts for damaging earthquakes of hypothetically long return periods. This is done in an attempt to examine low-probability hazards after what was observed in the 2023 Turkey earthquake. The obtained results can be used for urban planning and risk mitigation at the New Mallawi city.