Characterization of site effects in Montreal, Canada

P. Rosset () and L. Chouinard

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2009, vol. 48, issue 2, 295-308

Abstract: Recent destructive earthquakes have clearly shown that near-surface geological conditions play a major role in the level of ground shaking in urban areas. In Canada, Montreal is ranked second for seismic risk after Vancouver considering its population and regional seismic hazard. The city is largely built on recent unconsolidated marine and river deposits and most of its infrastructure is old and deteriorated. A seismic risk project that includes a combined methodology for site effects zoning in large cities, using microtremor measurements (H/V method) coupled with 1D numerical modelling (SHAKE91), has been initiated. The experimental approach gives good estimates of the fundamental frequency of soft deposits, while the numerical approach provides good estimates of the soil response in terms of amplification factor related to frequency. Main mechanical properties of soft soils were compiled from various data available, and a sample of input rock motions from real and synthetic earthquakes was used to compute soil response. The influence of marine clays on soil response is significant and is well correlated with thickness of these deposits. PGA amplification factors range from 2 to 4 at frequencies from 2 to 7 Hz, with some occasional larger values. The results demonstrate that the methodology used for our study is both fast and efficient to determine the influence of soft soils in urban environments. Such studies are essential for the effective deployment of seismic instrumentation, land-use planning and seismic mitigation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Keywords: Seismic site effect; Ambient noise method; 1D modelling; Microzonation; Montreal; Mitigation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-008-9263-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:48:y:2009:i:2:p:295-308

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-008-9263-1

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().