DFNK

1. the research project TPB1 „New Generation of Seismic Hazard Assessments" - applied to the Lower Rhine Embayment (the Cologne - Aachen region)

as well as
 

2. the coordination of and active contribution to the "Synopsis of Natural Risks" for the city of Köln - linking many of the DFNK sub-projects to one another.

The TPB1 project focusses on the area of and around Köln, which is affected from different types of natural disasters (i.e., earthquakes, flooding and storms). It contains a comprehensive probabilistic seismic hazard study for the seismic zone of the Lower Rhine Embayment with the maximum seismic hazard in the area between Köln and Aachen in accordance with the known seismicity.

An advanced M_w based earthquake catalogue has been generated. Five different seismic source zone models have been developed for the target area according to the latest neotectonic findings and the epistemic and aleatoric uncertainities of all input parameters are considered. As a consequence, all the calculated hazards - for peak and spectral ground accelerations and intensities - are consequently provided with error fractiles, given here as median (50% fractile), median ± one standard deviation (84% and 16%) as well as mean values.
All these innovations and refinements contstitute indeed a new generation of seismic hazard assessments.

The research project TPB1 represents the starting point of a chain of coordinated sub-projects up to seismic risk and earthquake engineering. The hazard assessments are made for rock surfaces in order to enable a combination with different microzonation analyses providing the influence of the sedimentary cover. Moreover, the basic seismic loads for deterministic and probabilistic risk studies for the city of Köln are provided.

The Synopsis of Natural Risks for the area of Köln represents a special challenge as an interaction of the DFNK groups across the various disaster topics. In terms of risk assessments, the different hazard aspects become quantitatively comparable.