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Earthquake Scenarios

September 27, 2022
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Earthquake Scenario
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Scenario for Cascadia Rising Exercise.

In planning and coordinating emergency response, utilities, local government, and other organizations are best served by conducting training exercises based on realistic earthquake situations—ones similar to those they are most likely to face. ShakeMap Scenario earthquakes can fill this role. They can also be used to examine exposure of structures, lifelines, utilities, and transportation corridors to specified potential earthquakes.

A ShakeMap earthquake scenario is a predictive ShakeMap with an assumed magnitude and location, and, optionally, specified fault geometry.

This 2017 collection of nearly 800 ShakeMap earthquake scenarios is the authoritative U.S.G.S. collection for the continental U.S. The scenario fault ruptures are derived from the latest National Seismic Hazard Model for the U.S. (Petersen et al, 2014); the collection of events is known as the 2014 Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC) catalog. For this BSSC ShakeMap catalog, we leverage ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online to display locations, ruptures, and maximum shaking intensities. Each ShakeMap can be selected and any format of each can downloaded.

U.S. Map and List of Scenarios for Building Seismic Safety Council 2014 Event Set

See bssc2014 catalog link below for more detailed information about this scenario collection. Legacy scenario catalogs are included for archival purposes.

ShakeMap Scenario Documentation

(links to ShakeMap Manual section 3.3.3)

All Scenario Catalogs

Related Scenarios and Exercises

Related scenario efforts include ongoing and past ShakeOut exercises, drills, and 3-D simulations.