Spatial Distribution of Global Earthquake Events A Geographical Analysis of Seismic Risk
Keywords:
Earthquake distribution, seismic risk, spatial analysis, tectonic boundaries, earthquake hotspotsAbstract
The study investigated the spatial distribution of global earthquake events and evaluated the relative seismic-risk patterns through historical earthquake data from 1965 to 2016. A quantitative, retrospective and spatial research design was used on an open-access data set with 23,412 seismic events and 21 variables. Other explosions, rock bursts, and nuclear explosions were eliminated, and 23,232 natural earthquakes were retained for analysis. The tools used were descriptive statistics, temporal trend, regional comparison, correlation, logistic regression, geographic mapping and hotspot analysis by grid. It was found that earthquakes were highly localized along major tectonic boundaries like the Pacific Ring of Fire, Himalayan–Mediterranean belt and along the active oceanic margins. 68.60% of the earthquakes recorded were moderate, and 79.55% were shallow focus earthquakes. A region of Asia had the largest number of earthquakes, and the highest magnitude earthquake, at 9.1. High seismic concentration occurred in Oceania and South America and moderate proportions were found in these regions of earthquakes. There was a statistically significant, but practically negligible, relationship between magnitude and focal depth. Asia and Oceania were deemed very high risk and South America high risk in terms of seismic-risk index. The study highlights the importance of historical earthquake datasets, GIS and spatial analysis to identify seismic hotspots and facilitate hazard-informed land-use planning, infrastructure construction, monitoring and disaster preparedness. The risk classification is however an event-based seismic risk as there was no information on population exposure and structural vulnerability.
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