Earthquake hazard assessment for Ankara

Ankara is generally known to be a safe place in terms of seismicity and earthquake hazard. However, recent seismological researches showed the opposite of this idea. As the number of research projects about Ankara goes up, the number of scientists who support the idea that Ankara and its surrounding has high earthquake risk also increases. Although, there is an increase in the number of studies related to earthquake risk in Ankara, there is no any similar study investigated seismicity and earthquake hazard of Ankara in full detail.Therefore, it is required to investigate the seismicity and the earthquake hazard of Ankara and its surroundings in detail for the information about the earthquakes in the area by scanning archives, earthquake catalogues and media resources, to determine the fault lines/regions, which can possibly cause the earthquakes, and to estimate magnitude and return period of a possible earthquake. The aim of this thesis was to conduct studies that are suggested above. Hence, the seismicity and the earthquake hazard of Ankara were obtained by using latest available technology, information and developments. This will be a study to be used as a case study in other provinces of Turkey.As a result of researches conducted in this study, the earthquake hazard maps for Ankara are produced by using probability methods for ground accelaration, which has 40%, 20%, 10%, 5% and 2% exceedance probabilities in 50 years. The ground accelaration within the city borders of Ankara is obtained to be between 0.05 and 0.4 g according to the maps, which is produced by ground accelaration to be exceeded by 10% in 50 years. Moreover, the earthquake hazard map is prepared for the region also by using the deterministic method.