Seismic Risk Scenarios for the City of Santa Tecla, El Salvador

Abstract eng:
El Salvador is struck by a destructive earthquake or earthquake sequence, once per decade on average. The capital city San Salvador is probably the city in the Americas that has been most frequently damaged by earthquakes. The city of Santa Tecla was founded on 1854 with the goal to build a new capital for El Salvador after San Salvador was completely destroyed by an earthquake, objective which did not materialized after all. Santa Tecla has experienced the same fate of its neighbors, partially attributed to the local soil condition, with dominant periods in the same range as the typical infrastructure in the city. Therefore, Santa Tecla has been identified as one of the most critical areas in terms of seismic risk, and has been selected to conduct this research. The project comprised four main activities: calibration of a national seismic hazard model, appraisal of the site effects for the San Salvador Metropolitan Area (AMSS), estimation of the exposed assets in the study area and quantification of the structural vulnerability. The probabilistic seismic risk analysis considered 24,966 probable seismic scenarios and 16,444 buildings belonging to Residential, Commerce, Industry and other Portfolios with an exposed value around 963,414 million dollars. The expected annual loss confirms the high level of seismic risk in the study area.

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