Earthquake sources of the Australian plate margin: data for the 2018 national tsunami and earthquake hazard assessments

Brief description

This ecat record refers to the data described in ecat record 123048. The data, supplied in shapefile format, is an input to the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment for Australia (NSHA18) product (ecat 123020) and the 2018 Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment for Australia (PTHA18) product (ecat 122789).

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Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded

Statement: Geoscience Australia develops the National Seismic Hazard Assessment (NSHA) for Australia. The NSHA defines the level of earthquake ground shaking across Australia that has a given likelihood of being exceeded in a given time period. Knowing how the ground-shaking hazard varies across Australia allows higher hazard areas to be identified and prioritised for the development of mitigation strategies so communities can be more resilient to earthquake events. The NSHA also provides key information to the Australian Government Building Codes Board, so buildings and infrastructure design standards can be updated to ensure they can withstand earthquake events in Australia. Geoscience Australia schedules the update to the NSHA with the update to the earthquake loading standard, so the committee can consider any changes to the seismic hazard risk of Australia, and whether the code needs to be amended to reflect this. The 2018 update was scheduled to inform the 2017 revision of the earthquake loading standard. Promotion of project via http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/safety/nsha The Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment (PTHA) models the frequency with which tsunamis of any given size occur around the entire Australian coast, due to subduction earthquakes in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The PTHA also provides modelled tsunami data for hundreds of thousands of earthquake-tsunami scenarios around Australia. The PTHA provides vital information to emergency managers to plan and reduce the threat of tsunami hazard on the Australian coast, and for the insurance industry to understand the tsunami risk as an input to pricing insurance premiums. This information provides a nationally consistent basis for understanding tsunami inundation hazards in Australia. It is important to note that the PTHA does not define the onshore tsunami impact, or the effect of tsunamis on communities. However, understanding the frequency of tsunamis offshore from the PTHA is a key input for developing local tsunami inundation models, in conjunction with additional high-resolution bathymetry and elevation data, to derive evidence-based evacuation plans to improve community safety. High risk areas can be identified and prioritised for further analysis or to conduct scenarios to improve risk mitigation and community safety at a local, regional and national level. Promotion of project via http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/safety/ptha

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Purpose
This data is the output from the GA Record describing the earthquake sources of the Australian plate margin (ecat 123048) for use in the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment for Australia (NSHA18) product (refer ecat 123020) and the 2018 Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment for Australia (PTHA18) product (refer ecat 122789). This data is provided in shapefile format.