J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-019-09885-4

RESEARCH LETTER

Nomogram to help explain probabilistic seismic hazard

Received: 16 April 2019 / Accepted: 4 October 2019 / Published online: 8 November 2019
© The Author(s) 2019

Abstract Nomograms are an easy to use and visu- acceleration for a structural period of 1 s and return
ally attractive graphical tool to solve for any of the periods from 100 to 2500 years, where the effects of
variables within an often complex equation. In seis- the activity rate and the slope of the Gutenberg-Richter
mology, the most well-known nomogram is a three- relation are captured. We believe that this nomogram
parallel-scale graphic for the calculation of local mag- has considerable educational benefit for engineering
nitude given the epicentral distance and trace ampli- seismology students, decision makers and other non-
tude. Until the advent of computers, nomograms were expert users of results of PSHAs.
often employed by engineers and scientists in many
fields as they provide a means for rapid and accurate Keywords Seismic hazard · Earthquake ·
calculations as well as helping the user understand the Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment ·
sensitivity of the final results to the input parameters. Nomogram · Educational
It is this aid to understanding that remains a key attrac-
tion of these graphical tools, which are now rarely
seen (although they remain common in some fields 1 Introduction
of medicine where they are used for rapid screen-
ing and estimating risks). In this research letter, we Nomograms (also called nomographs) are graphical
present a nomogram summarising the results of simple tools that provide the user with an analogue computer
probabilistic seismic hazard assessments (PSHAs) for to evaluate an often complex equation (or group of
peak ground acceleration and elastic response spectral connected equations) only by means of a paper copy
of the nomogram and a straight edge. In seismology, a
Electronic supplementary material The online version of commonly seen nomogram is one for the calculation
this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-019-09885-4) of local magnitude given the epicentral distance and
contains supplementary material, which is available to the trace amplitude (Richter 1958), although nomo-
authorized users.
grams for other aspects of seismology have been pub-
J. Douglas () lished, e.g. Mahdyiar (1987) presented a nomogram
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, connecting variables of the Brune (1970, 1971) source
University of Strathclyde, James Weir Building,
spectrum. Until the advent of cheap, easy and ubiqui-
75 Montrose Street, Glasgow, G1 1XJ, UK
e-mail: [email protected] tous computing, nomograms were commonly used in
many branches of science and engineering to obtain
L. Danciu
Swiss Seismological Service, ETH Zurich, answers easily, quickly and relatively precisely (e.g.
Sonneggstrasse 5, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland Levens 1959). In the current age of spreadsheets and
222 J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228

specialist software, nomograms are no longer com- 50 years), different ground-motion levels at a site of
monly used by practicing scientists and engineers. interest. The exceedance probabilities of the ground-
However, they remain a useful educational tool to motion levels are controlled by both the ground-
understand visually the connections among the vari- motion model and the forecasts of earthquakes of
ables within an equation and the sensitivity of the different magnitudes at various locations (as described
results to changes in those variables. Nomograms may by a seismogenic source model).
help those people who prefer pictures to equations
understand the inputs and results of complex calcula- 2.1 Simple probabilistic seismic hazard assessments
tions. This advantage is one reason why nomograms
are currently used in medicine when rapidly assessing To generate our nomogram, we combine the ground-
health risks (e.g. Kattan and Marasco 2010). Another motion model of the ESHM13 (Delavaud et al. 2012)
advantage of nomograms is that they cannot be eval- and an area source zone of 2◦ × 2◦ (surface area
uated for combinations of input variables outside the of 49, 560 km2 ) and calculate the seismic hazard at
limits of applicability of the equation(s). the centre of this zone. A time-independent model
In this research letter, we present a nomogram dis- of seismic activity rates is assumed and defined by
playing the results of relatively simple probabilistic an exponential magnitude distribution (Gutenberg and
seismic hazard assessments (PSHAs). In Section 2, Richter 1944): log10 N(M) = a − bM, where N(M)
the calculations used to construct this nomogram are is the cumulative number of earthquakes per unit time
described and in Section 3 the final nomogram is pre- equal to or larger than magnitude M, and a and b
sented and some example calculations shown using are empirical constants. The activity rate (a value)
these graphical tools. The results of these calculations represents the total seismic productivity of a given
are compared to those obtained using the 2013 Euro- source (= log10 N(M = 0), i.e. log of the num-
pean Seismic Hazard Model (ESHM13, Woessner ber of earthquakes with M > 0), and the b value is
et al. (2015)) and the 2014 Earthquake Model of the the negative slope of the recurrence curve expressing
Middle East (EMME, Giardini et al. (2018)). The arti- average ratio of exponentially distributed small and
cle ends with some brief conclusions. The nomogram large earthquakes. This parameter controls the occur-
presented here should not be seen as a replacement for rence rates of moderate to large earthquakes. For this
a real PSHA but only as an educational tool. nomogram, the range of activity rates is selected to be
representative of low to high seismicity areas in the
ESHM13 (Woessner et al. 2015). We consider three
2 Method for the construction of the nomogram b values: 0.75, 1.00 and 1.25, to capture the variabil-
ity in this parameter within ESHM13. An upper bound
The aim of any PSHA is to estimate the probabilities magnitude of 8.5 has been imposed. The seismicity is
of exceeding, within a fixed observational time (e.g. concentrated at a depth of 5 km so the nomogram is

Fig. 1 Fit between the expected PGA computed from PSHA for the nine considered activity rates and three considered b values
(crosses) and the power laws fit using Eq. 1 (red dashed lines)
J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228 223

Fig. 2 Fit between the expected SA(1s) computed from PSHA for the nine considered activity rates and three considered b values
(crosses) and the power laws fit using Eq. 1 (red dashed lines)

only for shallow crustal seismicity. The annual cumu- the calculated expected PGAs and SA(1 s) and the
lative rates of (M > M0 ) considered are 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, predictions using these equations is very close for
0.3, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 for M0 = 4.5. Hence, all cases (Figs. 1 and 2). Power laws modelling the
the nomogram should not be used outside the range annual frequencies of exceedance of different lev-
N(M0 = 4.5) = 0.05 to 2.0. els of ground-motion intensity are commonly used
Two ground-motion intensity measures (IMs) are to parameterise hazard curves (e.g. Comité Européen
considered: peak ground acceleration (PGA) and de Normalisation 2005; Lubkowski 2010; Kennedy
pseudo-spectral acceleration for a structural period of 2011).
1 s and 5% of critical damping [SA(1 s)]. We con- Next, for both PGA and SA(1 s), cubic equations
sider five mean return periods: 100, 200, 475, 1000, are found to predict perfectly (coefficient of determi-
2500 years, roughly corresponding to the require- nation R 2 = 100%) the values of c0 and c1 given
ments of modern seismic design codes (e.g. Eurocode ln N(M0 = 4.5) for each value of b (Figs. 3 and 4).
8 (Comité Européen de Normalisation 2005)). Hence, The Electronic Supplement is an Excel spreadsheet to
the nomogram should not be used outside the range evaluate Eq. 1.
of return periods 100 to 2500 years. The calculations
were performed in OpenQuake (Pagani et al. 2014)
using extended ruptures. 3 The nomogram

2.2 Fitting the assessed seismic hazard The open-source program pynomo1 was then used to
with closed-form equations draw a type 10 nomogram after putting Eq. 1 into the
form required for this type, i.e.
The results from each of the calculations (where each
calculation consists of the same input except for the F1 (u) + F2 (v)F3 (w) + F4 (w) = 0 (2)
activity rate) were fit using a power law connecting the
PGA or SA(1 s) to the return period. The equation (in where F1 (u) = ln y, F2 (v) = − ln T , F3 (w) = c1 (N)
terms of natural logarithms to make the relation linear) and F4 (w) = −c0 (N). The resulting nomogram is
fit was shown in Fig. 5. To read Fig. 5, connect two of the
variables (e.g. N(M0 = 4.5) and return period) with
ln y = c0 + c1 ln T (1) a straight line and where it crosses the axis for the
third variable that is its value (e.g. PGA). Example
where y is PGA or SA(1s) in cm/s2 , T is the return
period in years, and c0 and c1 are coefficients found
1 http://pynomo.org/wiki/index.php/Main
by linear least squares regression. The match between Page
224 J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228

Fig. 3 The relationship between c0 and c1 , i.e. the coefficients of Eq. 1, and ln N(M0 = 4.5), i.e. log of the number of earthquakes of
magnitude greater than 4.5, and the fitted cubic equations (for PGA)

calculations are shown using red lines for a return seismic sources can result in a more complex haz-
period of 475 years and an activity rate of N(M0 = ard pattern than the estimates from a single seismic
4.5) = 0.1 (a moderate seismicity zone). source. In the analysis, we have considered a sin-
Needless to say that the comparison between esti- gle seismogenic source and the ground-motion models
mates from the simplified nomogram and those from a for two seismo-tectonic domains: the active shallow
real PSHA (e.g. ESHM13) is challenging for two main crust and stable continental region as described in
reasons. Firstly, the latter is a full hazard calculation Delavaud et al. (2012). Hence, the contributions of the
that blends full distributions of the inputs, in particular two ground-motion models are reflected in the hazard
the alternative ground-motion and seismogenic source results.
models. Secondly, the hazard calculation with Open- The expected PGAs and SA(1 s) for sites covered
Quake uses extensive ruptures for large magnitudes, by ESHM13 are obtained for the five return periods
which when combined with permissible boundaries of from the European Facilities of Earthquake Hazard

Fig. 4 The relationship between c0 and c1 , i.e. the coefficients of Eq. 1, and ln N(M0 = 4.5), i.e. log of the number of earthquakes of
magnitude greater than 4.5, and the fitted cubic equations (for SA(1 s))
J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228 225

Fig. 5 Nomogram for the assessed seismic hazard in terms of return period. The arrows on the right-hand side indicate the
PGA and SA(1 s). The axes at the left hand side (indicating return periods corresponding to the three structural performance
N(M0 = 4.5), i.e. the number of earthquakes larger than or requirements defined by Eurocode 8 (Comité Européen de Nor-
equal to magnitude 4.5 within a 2 × 2◦ square centred on the malisation 2005). The red dashed lines indicate some example
location of interest) are for PGA (black) and SA(1 s) (blue). calculations made using the nomogram
AFE means annual frequency of exceedance and T means
226 J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228

Table 1 Comparison between the expected PGAs and SA(1 s)s for return periods of 225 and 2475 years obtained using the nomogram
and from ESHM13 for 14 European capital cities

IM PGA (cm/s2 ) SA(1 s) (cm/s2 )

T (yr) 225 2475 225 2475

City N Nomogram ESHM13 Nomogram ESHM13 Nomogram ESHM13 Nomogram ESHM13

Athens 1.33 213 220 702 648 101 133 457 442
Belgrade 0.45 113 71 442 218 48 32 243 109
Bern 0.24 75 71 327 230 31 34 165 114
Bratislava 0.10 41 65 209 240 16 25 96 99
Brussels 0.02 N/A 40 N/A 137 N/A 20 N/A 77
Bucharest 0.13 49 168 238 407 19 134 112 341
Lisbon 0.47 116 152 452 500 50 63 250 266
Ljubljana 0.74 153 160 552 439 68 64 327 221
Podgorica 1.02 184 171 632 499 85 80 394 297
Reykjavik 1.31 212 312 699 805 100 165 453 605
Rome 1.22 203 128 680 367 96 59 436 205
Sarajevo 0.45 113 81 443 255 48 41 243 129
Tirana 2.65 N/A 281 N/A 715 N/A 142 N/A 492
Zagreb 0.60 135 163 504 477 59 64 289 246

IM means intensity measure, T means return period and N is the average number of earthquakes with Mw ≥ 4.5 per year within a
2◦ × 2◦ box centred on the city in SHEEC (Grünthal et al. 2013). For precision, the values reported in the ‘Nomogram’ columns were
actually evaluated using the Excel spreadsheet provided in the Electronic Supplement. The values in the ‘ESHM13’ columns were
obtained by interpolating the hazard curves for the city from EFEHR in log-log space at the return periods of interest

and Risk (EFEHR).2 These hazard estimates are then this on the central nomogram axis the range from 34
grouped by the seismic activity parameters (the a to 101 cm/s2 (i.e. ± 50% of this exact value) is shown
and b values discussed in Section 2.1) for the source instead.
zone enclosing the selected site. The activity rates To compare estimates from the nomogram to those
were normalised to the surface area of the 2◦ × 2◦ from real PSHAs, hazard results from ESHM13 for
area considered for the simple PSHA. It was found some example locations (14 European capitals) are
that the expected PGAs and SA(1 s) estimated using listed in Table 1 alongside estimates obtained from
the nomogram were generally within 50% of those the nomogram, assuming b = 1.00 (often a valid
from ESHM13 for locations with the same normalised assumption (e.g. Frohlich and Davis 1993)). To obtain
activity rates. We also conducted a comparison for N(M0 = 4.5) for each of the considered locations,
locations covered by EMME and a similarly close the instrumental earthquake catalogue used for the
match was found. Therefore, we have chosen to indi- ESHM13 (SHEEC 1900-2006, (Grünthal et al. 2013))
cate on Fig. 5 the rough limits of the nomogram to was queried for a 2◦ × 2◦ box centred on the loca-
provide accurate hazard estimates (as measured by the tion to obtain the average number of earthquakes with
match to results from ESHM13 and EMME for many Mw ≥ 4.5 per year.
locations) by giving a range of ±50% around the exact This comparison shows that for eight of the consid-
PGAs and SA(1 s) obtained from the simple PSHAs. ered cities (Athens, Bern, Bratislava, Lisbon, Ljubl-
For example, the simple PSHA for a return period of jana, Reykjavik, Podgorica and Zagreb) hazard levels
475 years, N(M0 = 4.5) = 0.1 and b = 1.00 gives a from the nomogram are generally within 50% of those
exact PGA value of 67 cm/s2 but rather than indicate from the real PSHA of ESHM13. Such a convergence
among results from the simple PSHAs (represented by
2 http://www.efehr.org
the nomogram on Fig. 5) and this regional PSHA was
J Seismol (2020) 24:221–228 227

found despite differences between the ground-motion on peak ground acceleration but a large influence for
models used in ESHM13 and the complexities of its long-period spectral accelerations. It also shows that
seismogenic source models. Although it could be sur- the expected ground motions for a given return period
prising that the simple PSHA used to derive the nomo- increase as the activity rate increases but that the rate
gram can provide rough estimates of the results from a of increase reduces. In conclusion, we contend that
real PSHA, it can be partially explained by the obser- this nomogram provides the non-expert with valuable
vation that hazard disaggregation (Bazzurro and Cor- insights into PSHAs that is not possible with standard
nell 1999) often shows that the most important earth- means of presentation.
quakes are within 100 km (or even closer) from the
location of interest (e.g. Barani et al. 2009). Therefore, Acknowledgements We thank Leif Roschier, the author of
the assumption that the location is within a single local pynomo, the program used to generate the nomograms shown
source zone of uniform seismicity can often be made. here, and Ron Doerfler for his website deadreckonings.com
Table 1, however, does demonstrate the limitations with much useful information on nomograms. John Douglas
thanks his colleagues Neil Ferguson and Mike Kenny for the
of the nomogram. When the average annual number lunchtime discussion that inspired him to investigate the advan-
of earthquakes with Mw ≥ 4.5 is less than 0.05 (e.g. tages of nomograms. Finally, we thank two reviewers for their
Brussels) or greater than 2.0 (e.g. Tirana), the nomo- careful reviews of earlier versions of this manuscript.
gram cannot be used (because of the lower limit other
capital cities in the north of Europe, e.g. London and Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the
Oslo, where the seismicity is low are not included Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://
in this table). When the seismic hazard is dominated creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unre-
by distant earthquakes (e.g. Bucharest, for which the stricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s)
Vrancea earthquake zone is important), the nomo- and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
gram significantly underestimates the results of the and indicate if changes were made.
real PSHA. In contrast, if the location is close to but
not within an area of high seismicity (e.g. Belgrade,
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