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Site characterisation and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment in Tura City, Meghalaya

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Abstract

Tura city is situated in a seismically active area of the Western Garo Hills of Meghalaya (India) that experienced the devastating 1897 Assam Earthquake of Mw~8.1. The city lies in the southwest corner of the Shillong plateau, which is influenced by the complex geodynamics of the Himalayan orogeny, the Indian plate subduction beneath the Burmese counterpart and the adjacent Bengal basin evolution process. The present study aims to provide some geotechnical information for earthquake hazard assessment in some of the densely populated sites within Tura city by using two methods: PSHA (probabilistic seismic hazard assessment) in the CRISIS2015 platform and MASW (multi-channel analysis of surface waves) for site characterisation. Hazard maps for different structural periods have been prepared considering fixed intensity and fixed return of 475 years. Hazard curves and uniform hazard response spectra are prepared for different sites within Tura city based on estimated Vs30 value, indicating the estimated PGA value is 0.59 g for 10% probability of exceedance. This integrated approach is an attempt to mitigate probable earthquake hazards in Tura City from a geotechnical engineering perspective.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Director, CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology (CSIR-NEIST), Jorhat, for his permission to publish the work. We sincerely acknowledge North Eastern Council (NEC), Shillong (No. NEC/ST/AS/689/2012, July 2018) and Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), New Delhi for necessary sponsorship of the project. We acknowledge all those personnel who helped us during field investigations with necessary logistics in inaccessible terrain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Petroleum Technology, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, 786 004, India

    Himanta Borgohain

  2. Geo-Science and Technology Division, CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology, Jorhat, 785 006, India

    Saurabh Baruah & Sangeeta Sharma

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  1. Himanta Borgohain
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  2. Saurabh Baruah
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Contributions

Saurabh Baruah has conceptualised and executed the work besides writing. He is responsible for ensuring that all the descriptions are accurate and agreed upon by all authors. Himanta Borgohain has carried out field investigations and data analysis pertaining to MASW and PSHA. Sangeeta Sharma carried out the strong motion analysis and redrawing figures.

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Correspondence to Saurabh Baruah.

Additional information

Communicated by Sagarika Mukhopadhyay

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Borgohain, H., Baruah, S. & Sharma, S. Site characterisation and probabilistic seismic hazard assessment in Tura City, Meghalaya. J Earth Syst Sci 133, 84 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-024-02291-6

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