Earthquake in israel

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Earthquake in israel

• Wen Xu
• Xiaojing Yang

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• Israel is situated astride the Jordan Rift Valley
• the boundary between the Arabian and African
  tectonic plates
• slip displacement has developed along the rift at
  an average rate
• of about 1 cm/year
• 6 times earthquakes

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First ReferenceBible

• References to historical earthquakes find in the
  Bible.
• The destruction of the cities of Sodom and
  Gomorrah, situated adjacent to the Dead Sea, in
  the Rift Valley
• Joshua led the Children of Israel across the
  Jordan River In the 13th Century B.C.
• Another descriptive biblical reference to an
  earthquake is found in the Book of Kings

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King Uzziah earthquake

• The earthquake occured around 760 B.C., at the
  time of the prophet Amos
• Destroyed the Galilee town of Hazor
• in the fourth century B.C., the prophet
  Zechariah still referred to it

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Third earthquake

• The historian of the second temple period,
  Josephus Flavius, described an earthquake
• claimed that about 10,000 people perished in
  Judea as a result of collapse of buildings.

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Destroy of Beth She'an

• It was a thriving City at the end of the 4th
  century
• Recent excavations uncovered some columns of the
  Byzantine Colonnaded Street
• The Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount destroyed
  twice
• Jerusalem was damaged
• Catastrophic earthquakes have continued to occur
  through the ages in Israel

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• A catastrophic event took place in 1759, and was
  recorded in a letter written in Hebrew by a
  scribe named Joseph
• Another large earthquake occured in 1927, causing
  considerable damage to structures, Large cracks
  developed in the region of the Dead Sea

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• Physical evidence for the historic occurance of
  earthquakes in and off coast Israel has been
  provided by a bathymetric map of the seabed of
  the Israeli continental slope

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Solutions

• In view of the seismic history of the area,
  ongoing research is being carried out on
  geotechnical aspects of earthquake engineering,
  particularly as related to Israel.

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• Aims of the Research
• One of the primary aims of this research is to
  attempt to define the most potentially dangerous
  areas, so that steps can be taken to increase
  safety in these regions.

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Methodology

• a study of site effects at five locations in
  Israel, with typical soil profiles, has been
  presented by Frydman (1993)
• ---Tel Aviv (site T)
• ---Haifa Bay (site H)
• ---Ashdod (site A)
• ---Eilat (site E)
• ---Beth She'an (site B)

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The Location of sites
T---Tel Aviv H---Haifa Bay A---Ashdod
E---Eilat B---Beth She'an
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• Earthquake Records Used for Analyses

Recording site Label Date Magnitude Epicentraldist. (km) Max. accn.(g)
Haifa H Aug. 84 5.2 20 0.05
Dead Sea DS Oct. 87 4.3 6.5 0.02
Whittier W Oct. 87 6.1 19 0.19
Petrolia, Calif. C June 75 5.3 31 0.2
Taft T July 52 7.2 45 0.18

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Acceleration time histories of chosen earthquakes
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Acceleration response spectra of chosen
earthquakes (5 damping)
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EQ T H A B E 20 m
H 0.16 0.26 0.33 0.35 0.28
DS 0.16 0.31 0.35 0.40 0.37
W 0.20 0.37 0.28 0.49 0.42
C 0.19 0.29 0.30 0.44 0.42
T 0.16 0.28 0.39 0.36 0.25

• Peak Ground Surface Acceleration

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Effect of soil cover thickness on surface
acceleration (Eilat site)
T4H / Vs
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Effect of maximum rock acceleration on surface
response (Tel-Aviv site)
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Practices

• The Ministry of Housing has initiated a program
  to investigate the condition of existing
  buildings, and where necessary, to carry out the
  appropriate steps for strengthening them, in high
  risk areas (e.g. Beit She'an). Similary, studies
  are being made of the seismic stability of
  structures and embankments (for example in the
  Dead Sea area).
• In parallel, steps are being taken in order to
  advance the seismic safety of new construction
  an updated seismic building code has been issued,
  and research into aseismic building methods
  continues.