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Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for rock sites in the cities of Abu
Dhabi, Dubai and Ra's Al Khaymah, United Arab Emirates
G. Aldama-Bustosa; J. J. Bommera; C. H. Fentona; P. J. Stafforda
a
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington
campus, London, UK

To cite this Article Aldama-Bustos, G. , Bommer, J. J. , Fenton, C. H. and Stafford, P. J.(2009) 'Probabilistic seismic hazard
analysis for rock sites in the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ra's Al Khaymah, United Arab Emirates', Georisk:
Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards, 3: 1, 1 — 29
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 Georisk
Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2009, 1
29

Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for rock sites in the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ra’s Al
Khaymah, United Arab Emirates
G. Aldama-Bustos, J. J. Bommer*, C. H. Fenton and P. J. Stafford

Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington campus, London, UK
(Received 18 December 2007; final version received 8 July 2008)

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is undergoing very rapid development with one of the highest construction
rates in the world. A number of studies of the seismic hazard in the UAE have been published in recent years,
presenting diverse interpretations of the earthquake threat in this country of relatively low local seismicity,
creating confusion regarding appropriate seismic design levels. Although there is inevitably considerable
uncertainty associated with the assessment of seismic hazard in such a region, those studies indicating rather high
levels of ground motion associated with a 475-year return period are found to be the result of inappropriate
seismic source zonations that spread seismicity from the Zagros region of Iran into the Arabian Peninsula. A new
probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is performed within a logic-tree framework, and the results displayed as
uniform hazard spectra for rock sites in the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ra’s Al Khaymah in the UAE. The
results support the UBC 1997 classification of the two former cities in Zone 0 (no seismic design required)
whereas in Ra’s Al Khaymah Zone 1 would be appropriate.
Keywords: United Arab Emirates; seismic hazard; earthquakes; uniform hazard spectra; Abu Dhabi;
Dubai; Ra’s Al Khaymah
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010

Introduction for Zone 2A of the 1997 edition of the Uniform

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been under-
going accelerated development in recent years, and
the UAE currently has one of the highest rates of
construction in the world. During the period from
2000 to 2004, the construction sector GDP in the
UAE increased by 166%, with an annual growth rate
of 27.7% (DCCI 2006). The main focus of construc-
tion activity is Dubai, where almost half of the
construction in the UAE is centred. Together with
Abu Dhabi, Dubai accounts for more than 60% of
the real estate market of the Gulf Cooperation
Council. One of the clearest indications of the
remarkable level of construction activity in Dubai is
the fact that of the estimated 125,000 travelling
cranes in operation worldwide, between 15 and
25% are working in Dubai (Landais 2006, Nicolson
2007).
Clearly, if there is an appreciable level of seismic
hazard in the UAE, it would be important for
seismic actions to be considered in the design of
structures built in this country, but the available
information on this issue is contradictory. The
clearest example of this is the fact that for buildings
of 5 storeys or more in height, the Dubai Munici-
pality requires design to the seismic loads specified
Building Code, UBC97 (ICBO, 1997). Interestingly,
UBC97 itself specifies Zone 0
which implies that
no seismic design is required
for both Dubai and
Abu Dhabi; Ra’s Al Khaymah is not classified in the
code. For rock sites, Zone 0 in UBC97 corresponds
to a horizontal peak ground acceleration (PGA)
significantly lower than 0.075g, which is the value
assigned to Zone 1.
There are at least seven studies, two published in
the 1990s and covering most of the Arabian
Peninsula and five specifically for the UAE pub-
lished in recent years, which have presented seismic
hazard estimates for the Emirates. These studies
have drawn very different conclusions regarding the
level of seismic hazard in the UAE, with estimates of
the 475-year peak ground acceleration (PGA) in
Dubai ranging from less than 0.05g to 0.16g.
Although even the larger value is not particularly
severe, the cost implications of the consequent
seismic design requirements, especially for high-rise
construction that is prevalent in the UAE, are
significant.
The purpose of this study is to obtain a reliable
estimate of the seismic hazard in the Emirates,
expressed as uniform hazard spectra (UHS) on rock
sites in three key cities in the country: Abu Dhabi,

*Corresponding author. T: 44-20-7594-5984, F: 44-20-7594-5934, Email: j.bommer@imperial.ac.uk

ISSN 1749-9518 print/ISSN 1749-9526 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17499510802331363
http://www.informaworld.com
 2 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
Dubai and Ra’s Al Khaymah. The paper starts with
an overview of the tectonic setting of the UAE,
including major active structures in the region
producing earthquakes that could affect the Emi-
rates. The local and regional seismicity is also
reviewed within the context of compiling an earth-
quake catalogue to form the basis of the probabilistic
seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) performed within
this study. This review includes discussion of some
minor earthquakes reported in the UAE during the
last few years. In the light of the tectonic setting and
regional seismicity, published hazard studies for the
UAE are then reviewed in the third section of the
paper, with particular focus on the source zonations
that have been used and also the ground-motion
prediction equations (GMPE) that they employed.
The fourth section of the paper then describes the
new PSHA performed for the three selected sites in
the UAE, including disaggregation to identify the
source zones contributing most significantly to the
hazard. The fifth section then discusses the results in
terms of PGA values and UHS, and how these
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
compare to previous hazard estimates and to the
elastic design spectra from UBC97. The paper closes
with brief conclusions regarding recommendations
for seismic design in the UAE and for additional
studies regarding potential earthquake hazard in the
Emirates.
Regional tectonics and seismicity
Given the divergent stances that previous researchers
have adopted when developing seismic source models
for hazard analyses within the UAE it is important to
begin by independently outlining the findings of the
published literature on the regional tectonics and
seismicity of the UAE and surrounding areas.
Tectonic setting of the UAE
The UAE is situated in the northeast of the Arabian
plate which is bounded by a series of well defined
tectonic margins. The regional tectonic setting is
portrayed in Figure 1. In the southeast, the African
and Arabian plates diverge across the Gulf of Aden
while the Red Sea spreading boundary defines the
interface between these two plates in the southwest
(Johnson 1998, Vita-Finzi 2001). In the northwest,
the Dead Sea transform faults skirt the Mediterra-
nean Sea and run through to the Taurus Mountains
at the east of the Turkish plate (Vita-Finzi 2001). The
northern margin of the Arabian plate is defined
principally by the Zagros thrust and fold belt that
terminates to the north of the eastern limit of the
Persian Gulf (Jackson and McKenzie 1984). The
remainder of the north-eastern margin of the Arabian
plate is defined by the Makran subduction zone
where the Arabian plate subducts beneath the Eur-
asian plate (Farhoudi and Karig 1977, Bayer et al.
2006). The final boundary defining the Arabian plate
is the Owen fracture zone that is a transform
boundary separating the Indian and Arabian plates
in the east (Johnson 1998, Vita-Finzi 2001, Fournier
et al. 2007). Aside from these major boundaries the
Arabian plate is a stable landmass that does not
exhibit any discernable trace of interior deformation
during the late Tertiary (Al Kadhi and Hancock
1980, Vita-Finzi 2001). The interior of the Arabian
plate is also not known to have experienced any
significant seismic events over the past 2000 years or
so (Reches and Schubert 1987, Vita-Finzi 2001) and
may be regarded as a stable cratonic region (Johnson
et al. 1994, Fenton et al. 2006).
At longitudes near the UAE, the Arabian plate is
currently moving northwards (on a bearing of N889
58E) at a rate of approximately 2292 mm/year with
respect to the Eurasian plate (Vernant et al. 2004).
This convergence is accommodated by a combination
of intra-continental shortening throughout Iran (over
the Zagros fold and thrust belt) and by the subduc-
tion of the Arabian plate beneath the Eurasian plate
eastwards of about 588E (the Makran subduction
zone in the north of the Gulf of Oman) (Farhoudi
and Karig 1977, Bayer et al. 2006).
Although the boundaries outlined above define
the regional tectonic setting for the Arabian plate, the
majority of the mentioned margins are too distant to
be significant contributors to the seismic hazard at
sites within the UAE. However, Figure 1 also
indicates the presence of some active tectonic struc-
tures in the Oman Mountains close to the UAE
(Johnson 1998). The deformation associated with this
mountain range in addition to the boundaries of the
Zagros fold and thrust belt and the Makran subduc-
tion zone constitute the major seismic sources that are
likely to influence the seismic hazard for sites within
the UAE.
Understanding the regional tectonic setting allows
one to identify zones within which certain modes of
deformation are to be expected. However, for the
purposes of compiling a seismic source model for use
within a PSHA it is necessary to consider a higher
level of resolution and to identify individual faulting
structures that have the potential to generate earth-
quakes that may affect sites within the UAE.
Unfortunately, the published literature on the geolo-
gical features of the UAE and the north-eastern
Arabian Peninsula are relatively scarce. This scarcity
of information makes it difficult to constrain the
nature of structural features in the Oman Mountains
 Georisk
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Figure 1. Cenozoic tectonic setting of the Arabian plate; from Johnson (1998). Inset, from Lippard et al. (1982), shows the
location of the Dibba Zone in Oman.
and within the Arabian plate at locations close to the
sites of interest for this study. In contrast, there are
numerous publications related to the specific struc-
tural features of southern Iran; in particular the
Zagros and Makran regions (e.g., Berberian 1995,
Hessami et al. 2003, Farhoudi and Karig 1977). The
seismotectonic characteristics of each of these three
key regions is briefly described in the following.
The Zagros fold and thrust belt
The NW-SE trending Zagros fold and thrust belt
extends for a distance of more that 1500 km from
eastern Turkey to the Zendan-Minab fault system of
southern Iran (Jackson and McKenzie 1984, Berber-
ian 1995, Hessami et al. 2003). Deformation com-
menced during the Pliocene and the region is
currently undergoing approximately 10 mm/year
shortening in the southeast and 5 mm/year in the
northwest as a result of the continental collision
between the Arabian and Eurasian plates (Jackson
and McKenzie 1984, Berberian 1995, Allen et al.
2004, Vernant et al. 2004).
3
Owing to the presence of several ductile sedimen-
tary layers in the Zagros, decoupling of the Phaner-
ozoic cover from the Precambrian metamorphic
basement has occurred along the Lower Cambrian
Hormoz Salt and above the Eocene-Oligocene
Asmari Limestone along the Miocene Gachsaran
Evaporites (Berberian 1995). Consequently, large-
magnitude earthquakes tend not to rupture the
near-surface deposits in the Zagros. Rather, the 6

15 km thick Phanerozoic sedimentary cover is folded,
producing active anticlinal uplift and synclinal sub-
sidence (Berberian 1995). This surface deformation
may be used to infer the locations of the dominant
blind thrust faults underlying the sedimentary cover
but there will necessarily be a large degree of
uncertainty associated with any such inferences.
The Zagros region has been responsible for the
generation of large Ms 7 earthquakes in the past.
However, events of this magnitude are likely to be
approaching the maximum seismogenic potential of
the blind faults that characterise this region. Most of
the seismicity in the folded belt occurs on reverse
faults in the basement (dipping 408
508 and with NW
 4 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
to WNW trending strikes) and with slip vectors
typically oriented with azimuths of 308
408 (Jackson
and McKenzie 1984, Hessami et al. 2003). Teleseismic
body-wave modelling demonstrates that most of the
larger earthquakes to have occurred in this region
nucleated at depths of 10
20 km, below the sedimen-
tary layers (Jackson and Fitch 1981, Jackson and
McKenzie 1984). There is no evidence for subcrustal
(focal depths greater than 30 km) seismicity in the
Zagros (Jackson and McKenzie 1984).
Berberian (1995) discusses the Zagros fold and
thrust belt in detail and should be consulted for
further details regarding this seismotectonic domain.
However, for the purposes of the present study it
suffices to state that this domain consists of a series of
major blind thrust faults with significant seismogenic
potential interspersed with regions of distributed
seismicity associated with numerous blind thrusts
and associated folding. As the precise locations of
the blind faults are unknown it is prudent to regard
the various subdomains of the Zagros as areal
sources.
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
The Makran subduction zone
The Makran region, bounding southern Pakistan and
south-eastern Iran, is a 1000 km section of the
Eurasia-Arabian plate boundary where northward
subduction of the oceanic Arabian crust has occurred
continuously since the Early Cretaceous (Byrne
and Sykes 1992). There is some uncertainty regarding
the rate of subduction in the Makran with Vernant
et al. (2004) estimating a value in the range of 19.592
to 2792 mm/year; the latter value being the relative
velocity of the Arabian margin of the Gulf of Oman
with respect to Eurasia. The Makran subduction zone
is unusual in that the zone has no recognized
bathymetric trench and the eastern and western
halves of the zone exhibit very different patterns of
seismicity. These patterns of seismicity, with the east
and west having historical records with and without
great events respectively, suggest a possible segmen-
tation of the subduction zone. Such segmentation is
further suggested by the offsets in the volcanic arc
and by the large-scale two-block structure of the
overriding plate (the Lut and Helmand blocks
discussed by Byrne and Sykes 1992). The boundary
between the segments appears to occur near 618E,
coincident with the Sistan suture zone (Byrne and
Sykes 1992). On the other hand, many geologic and
tectonic features show no segmentation along the
Makran: the margin remains nearly straight for its
entire 1000 km length; present marine geophysical
data show no significant offsets anywhere offshore
along the margin; and the age of the subducting plate
lies between approximately 70 and 100 Ma along the
entire arc (Quittmeyer 1979, Byrne and Sykes 1992).
The largest earthquake to have been recorded in
this region was an event in 1945 with a surface-wave
magnitude, Ms, of 8.0 (Quittmeyer and Jacob 1979).
The distribution of intensities and the long-term
aftershock activity suggest that the length of the
rupture zone was between 100 and 200 km, and that
the rupture propagated to the east of the epicentre
(Byrne and Sykes 1992, Quittmeyer 1979). Using
teleseismic recordings, Quittmeyer (1979) and Jacob
and Quittmeyer (1979) define a shallow dipping
seismic zone
at about 68 according to Byrne
and Sykes (1992)
that extends to depths of about
80 km just south of the volcanic arc of the over-riding
blocks and locate the trench about 150 km south of
the Iranian coastline (at a latitude of 248N). The
dip increases to approximately 198 beyond a latitude
of 26.58N. Byrne and Sykes (1992) suggest an
aseismic zone at the toe of the subducting plate that
is also corroborated through plotting the EHB
seismicity catalogue (Engdahl et al. 1998) updated
to include events to 2004 (Engdahl, personal com-
munication 2006). The down-dip extent of the
primary seismogenic portion of the Makran subduc-
tion zone is uncertain. The seismicity distribution
suggests that the majority of activity occurs over the
uppermost half of the shallow-dipping portion of the
subducting plate. However, the presence of at least
two events beyond this zone in addition to seismo-
genic depths observed in other subduction zones
throughout the world (Tichelaar and Ruff 1993)
suggest that this interface may extend down farther
to where the dip of the subducting plate steepens,
thus increasing the seismogenic potential of this
source.
Although great earthquakes have not been ob-
served in the western Makran, evidence of coseismic
deformation in this region exists in the form of a
sequence of uplifted coastal terraces (Page et al. 1978,
Quittmeyer 1979). It is therefore possible that the
observed segmentation of the Makran is simply a
result of a limited period of observation and that
future large events may occur in this region. Whether
or not the Makran subduction zone is segmented
clearly has a significant influence upon the seismo-
genic potential of the zone.
Complex faulting occurs in the region where the
Zagros fold and thrust belt and the Makran subduc-
tion zone meet. The faults in this region that
accommodate this significant change in tectonic
regime are known as the Zendan-Minab fault system.
This system of north to northwest trending faults
plays two major roles: (1) to accommodate the
oblique plate convergence, and (2) to transform
 Georisk
Zagros collision processes into the Makran subduc-
tion (Regard et al. 2004, 2005). This deformation is
not solely accommodated through the Zendan-Minab
system as a contribution is also made by the more
easterly located Sabzevaran-Jiroft Fault system (Re-
gard et al. 2005). Being sympathetic fault systems, the
seismogenic potentials of these faults are not as great
as those comprising the major margins of the Zagros
and the Makran. However, their proximity to sites
within the UAE (particularly the northern UAE)
means that these fault systems will inevitably con-
tribute to estimates of seismic hazard and must
therefore be included within any seismic source model
developed for the region. Moderate-to-large events
are known to have occurred within these fault
systems in the past and are inevitable given the
different modes of deformation that exist to the east
and west of the region.
Oman Mountains and the Dibba Line
The Oman Mountains, also known as the Hajar
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Mountains, are located along the north-eastern
margin of the Arabian plate, in northern Oman (see
Figure 1). They reach over 3 km in height and exhibit
many features consistent with active tectonics (Kusky
et al. 2005). The present height and ruggedness of the
Oman Mountains is a product of Cretaceous ophio-
lite obduction, Tertiary extension, and rejuvenated
uplift and erosion, which began at the end of the
Oligocene and continues today (Kusky et al. 2005).
In addition to field evidence of active faulting
there is also historical evidence of earthquake activity
in the region (Kusky et al. 2005). Furthermore, on 11
March 2002, an earthquake of Mw 5 occurred
within the Oman Mountains and was felt over
much of northern UAE and Oman. It had a normal
mechanism with a slight right-lateral strike-slip
component, which is consistent with the large-scale
tectonics of the region. The normal component
suggests relaxation of obducted crust of the Semail
ophiolite, while the right-lateral strike-slip compo-
nent is consistent with shear across the Oman Line
(Rodgers et al. 2006).
Little research has been conducted on the neotec-
tonics of northern Oman. The British Geological
Survey recently carried out a detailed geological
survey of the northern part of the UAE that goes
some way to improving this situation (Ellison and
Sykes 2006). As a result of this project, previously
known structures were better identified; among these
structures are the Dibba Line, the Wadi Shimal and
the Wadi Ham faults that lie within the Dibba-
Masafi-Fujairah area of the northern UAE. The
Dibba Line is almost parallel to the Zendan-Minab
5
fault system with a NE-SW strike and dextral strike-
slip motion (Lippard et al. 1982, Kusky et al. 2005,
Rodgers et al. 2006, Styles et al. 2006). Observed
patterns of uplift over this region led Kusky et al.
(2005) to suggest that the transform boundary con-
sisting of both the Zendan-Minab fault system and
contuining down to the Dibba line may penetrate
both the over-riding and subducting plates.
The proximity of the Oman Mountains and the
associated fault structures within this range dictate
that a seismic source should be assigned to this region
when conducting a PSHA for sites in the UAE.
Characterisation of this source is complicated by
the fact that very little seismicity information is
available to constrain activity rates. The activity of
this source must, therefore, be based primarily upon
geological considerations of rates of uplift and
average regional deformation.
Regional seismicity
For the purposes of characterising the activity rates
of the identified seismic sources a seismicity catalogue
was compiled using information from several sources:
. the on-line bulletin of the United States Geo-
logical Survey (USGS 2003), which includes
information from the National Ocean and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and
the Preliminary Determination of Epicenters
(PDE) provided by the National Earthquake
Information Center (NEIC);
. the International Seismological Centre on-line
bulletin (ISC 2003);
. two regional catalogues compiled by Ambra-
seys and Melville (1982) and Ambraseys et al.
(1994);
. the EHB catalogue (Engdahl et al. 1998)
updated to consider events up to 2004 (En-
gdahl, personal communication 2006);
. the Earthquake Data Bank of the International
Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seis-
mology (IIEES 2003); and,
. the first earthquake catalogue of Iran by
Berberian (1994).
The initial catalogue was compiled for a spatial
region spanning 478 to 668E and 218 to 318N and
included all events having an assigned magnitude of 4
and above on any magnitude scale. For events prior
to 1900, even those events without reported magni-
tude values were considered with the aim of compar-
ing locations and dates provided by the different
agencies. The catalogue covers the time period from
3000 BC up to 1 October 2003. This latter date was
chosen as only events reported prior to this date were
 6 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
regarded as being definitive by the International
Seismological Centre (ISC 2003) at the date the
catalogue was compiled. During the compilation of
the dataset a thorough check was conducted to ensure
that any duplicated events were removed. A particu-
lar effort was made to gather additional information
regarding events with magnitude of 6.5 and greater
(on any reported scale) from more detailed studies
that can be found in the literature, either for
particular events or regions (e.g., Berberian 1973,
1979, Melville 1978, Quittmeyer 1979, Jackson and
Fitch 1981, Jackson and McKenzie 1984, Baker et al.
1993, Berberian 1995, Berberian and Yeats 1999,
Berberian et al. 2001, Maggi et al. 2000, 2002,
Ambraseys and Bilham 2003a,b, Talebian and Jack-
son 2004, Walker et al. 2005).
The compiled seismicity catalogue may be re-
garded as spanning three time periods of distinctly
different quality: (1) historical seismicity, prior to
1900, and consisting almost exclusively of macro-
seismic information; (2) the early instrumental per-
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
iod, from 1900-1963 inclusive, consisting of a
combination of macroseismic information and rela-
tively low-quality instrumental data; and (3) the
modern instrumental period, from 1964 onwards
and consisting of good quality instrumental data.
Many of the studies cited previously relate to
significant events that have occurred during the
modern instrumental period and enhance the quality
of this portion of the catalogue. The uncertainties in
location improve over these three time periods with
events reported prior to the modern instrumental
period having lateral position uncertainties com-
Figure 2. Homogenous seismicity catalogue in Ms for the UAE including all foreshocks and aftershocks. Diamonds indicate
the locations of the sites considered in this study: AD Abu Dhabi, D Dubai, and RAKRa’s Al Khaymah. All events of
Ms ]4.0 known to have occurred since 658 A.D. are plotted. The completeness levels vary with magnitude as discussed in the
text.
monly in excess of 30 km. Depths over this period
are also very poorly constrained.
The most common scale upon which magnitudes
have been reported for the region is surface-wave
magnitude, Ms. This is especially the case for the
events assigned magnitudes in the historical and early
instrumental parts of the catalogue with alternative
scales becoming more common during the modern
instrumental period. In order to ensure that the
seismicity catalogue was compiled in terms of a
homogeneous magnitude scale, all events for which
surface-wave magnitudes were not reported were
converted to this scale from Mb and Mw using the
relationships of Ambraseys and Bommer (1990) and
Ambraseys and Free (1997) respectively. The spatial
distribution of the compiled seismicity catalogue,
using a consistent Ms magnitude scale, is plotted in
Figure 2.
In addition to the checks that were made to
identify any duplicate events and the conversions that
were made in order to achieve homogeneous magni-
tude assignments, the catalogue was further processed
to remove dependent events and to identify relevant
completeness levels. A hybrid approach consisting of
the temporal window from Reasenberg’s (1985)
algorithm and the spatial window from Knopoff’s
(2000) algorithm was adopted for obtaining the
declustered catalogue.
Although any event having an assigned magni-
tude greater than 4.0 was initially included into the
base catalogue, for most of the period spanned by the
catalogue the level of completeness will be signifi-
cantly greater than this level. The procedure used to
identify the completeness levels of the catalogue are
 Georisk
based on that originally proposed by Stepp (1972)
and implemented into the software Wizmap II
(Musson 2001). On the basis of this approach the
declustered catalogue may be regarded as being
complete above Ms4.0 from 1967 onwards, Ms5.0
from 1925 onwards, Ms6.0 from 1910 and Ms7.0 from
1800. Various other levels of completeness were
adopted for other magnitudes and periods on the
basis of the chosen algorithm.
As previously stated, the compiled seismicity
catalogue includes events occurring prior to October
2003. According to the online bulletin of the ISC
(2006), a series of events have occurred within or near
to the UAE and the sites of interest in this study since
that time. In fact, when conducting a search for
events to have occurred within a 150 km radius of
Dubai the ISC catalogue returns 49 events over the
period 1924
1999 (0.65 events per year) 17 of which
do not have reported magnitudes and only three of
which are located inland within the Arabian Penin-
sula. However, when considering the time span from
2000-2006 the same search returns 18 events (3 events
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
per year), six of which are inland and two just
offshore (Figure 3).
Given the current construction rates in the UAE,
assessing the reliability of this apparent increase in
the rate of seismicity is very important and influences
the manner in which activity parameters are derived
for seismic sources when conducting PSHA. The
observed increase may be explained in three obvious
ways: (1) the regional seismicity has genuinely
Figure 3. Queries of the ISC online bulletin for events within 150 km of Dubai. Left: events occurring between 1924
1999;
right: events occurring between 2000
2006. N/M no magnitude. The events were listed chronologically and the numbers
assigned consecutively for simple identification.
7
increased; (2) many of the reported events (16/18)
currently have preliminary locations and later quality
checks will reveal these events to be mislocated; or (3)
many events that have legitimately occurred in the
past have not been detected or reported. Even though
the reported events all have small magnitudes, the
implications of each of these explanations are sig-
nificant and the numbered events in the right-hand
side of Figure 3 were therefore scrutinised on an
individual basis.
In order to corroborate the locations currently
reported by the ISC (2006), alternative online agen-
cies were queried and literature searches of local and
regional newspapers were conducted. These agencies
included the USGS online bulletin (USGS 2006), the
earthquake databank of the International Institute of
Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES
2006), and the earthquake databank of the Eur-
opean-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC
2006). A broadened search area was selected in order
to allow identification of possible mislocations, i.e.,
events occurring with the same, or very similar, times
but reported at different locations.
On the basis of the comparisons of the event
locations of the various agencies it was possible to
confirm the magnitudes and locations of events 51
and 52 (Figure 3) using the location from the USGS
in addition to news reports of these events being felt
in Dubai (Kazmi 2002, Shaghouri 2002) and recently
published literature regarding the focal mechanism
and depth of the events (Rodgers et al. 2006). Events
 8 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
53 and 57 are only reported by the IIEES (2006) and
the information provided in the ISC on-line bulletin
(2006) has not yet been reviewed by that agency.
Owing to the low magnitudes of these events, the
absence of felt reports does not preclude the possibi-
lity that these events genuinely occurred within the
Arabian Peninsula. Additionally, their location close
to the Hajar Mountains in Oman supports the
possibility that these events have genuinely occurred
within the Arabian Peninsula but that they have been
mislocated and may well have occurred closer to-
wards, or within, the mountains.
For event 64, a similar event was located by the
EMSC (2006) but with a slightly different origin time.
On the basis of such limited data it is difficult to
assert that both events are the same. For event 65, no
report of a similar event from any other agency was
found that could confirm whether or not the ISC
location is accurate. However, the agency reporting
this event is responsible for other mislocations and
the absence of any felt reports for this event, which
apparently occurred just 32 km from Abu Dhabi,
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casts suspicion on the legitimacy of the reported
location for this event. For events 66 and 67, reports
of the same event but with different locations to those
reported by the ISC (2006) were found in the USGS
(2006), IIEES (2006) and EMSC (2006) catalogues,
implying errors of up to 400 km in the ISC’s
preliminary location. This evidence would suggest
that these events occurred in southern Iran (within
the Zagros fold belt), rather than within the Arabian
Peninsula.
Therefore, while recent events such as events 51
and 52 have occurred inland within the Arabian
Peninsula in recent years, other events that are
currently reported to have occurred within the area
are most likely to be mislocated events that will be
removed upon revision. The apparent recent increase
in seismicity is therefore most likely to be a combina-
tion of natural variation in seismicity rates and
mislocated events. The seismicity catalogue that has
been compiled for the purpose of conducting the
PSHA for this study may therefore be used with
confidence when deriving activity parameters for the
identified seismic sources.
Review of previous hazard studies
The earliest published hazard study covering the
UAE of which the authors are aware is that carried
out by Al-Haddad et al. (1994), which focused on
deriving seismic design criteria for the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia but mapped hazard over the entire
Arabian Peninsula. The study defined seismic source
zones along the western and southern boundaries of
the Peninsula, as well as in southwest and southern
Iran, incorporating the Zagros and Makran regions.
No source zones were defined in the vicinity of the
UAE, the closest source of events
apart from
background activity
being a source zone that
combines the southernmost part of the Zagros and
the western edge of the Makran subduction zone
(Figure 4). A single ground-motion prediction equa-
tion, reportedly adapted from a western North
American equation for application in western Saudi
Arabia, was employed to map PGA for a 475-year
return period; the assumed site classification for the
mapping is not stated but is probably rock or stiff
soil. The highest acceleration contour in the UAE, at
the very northernmost limit of the country, is 0.10g,
but within the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ra’s
Al Khaymah the PGA values are below 0.05g.
The hazard estimates for UAE in the Al-Haddad
et al. (1994) study are consistent with the classifica-
tion of seismic hazard in Abu Dhabi and Dubai
presented in UBC97, which as noted previously
classifies both cities as Zone 0 whence seismic design
is not required. This contrasts starkly with the hazard
mapped in UAE as part of the Global Seismic
Hazard Assessment Project (GSHAP), which pro-
duced a map of PGA with a return period of 475
years in Europe, Africa and the Middle East
(Grünthal et al. 1999). The values of PGA mapped
in the UAE were significantly higher than those
implied by UBC97 and mapped by Al-Haddad
et al. (1994), with peak accelerations in Ra’s Al
Khaymah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi being 0.40g, 0.32g
and 0.24g, respectively, which would correspond to
UBC97 classifications of Zones 4, 3 and 2B. How-
ever, these estimates can be disregarded because they
are not the result of actual hazard calculations, as the
northeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula was not
covered by any of the regional sub-projects in
GSHAP and as a result, in order not to leave blank
areas within the global map, ‘‘the hazard was mapped
by simulating the attenuated effect of the seismic
activity in the Dead Sea fault area (Near East) and
in the Zagros province of Iran’’ (Grünthal et al. 1999).
In other words, the hazard estimates in the UAE were
simply inferred from the hazard in surrounding
regions without any consideration of local seismicity.
Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004) presented the
first PSHA specifically for the United Arab Emirates.
Their study begins by dismissing the GSHAP hazard
estimates for the UAE
citing, ad verbatim but
without reference, a report prepared by the second
author of this paper for an engineering consultancy
making a case for reduced seismic design loads to the
Dubai Municipality
and they go on to produce a
new hazard map. Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004)
 Georisk 9
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Figure 4. Seismic source zones defined for the PSHA studies of the regions by (a) Al-Haddad et al. (1994), (b) Abdalla and
Al-Homoud (2004), (c) Peiris et al. (2006), and (d) Musson et al. (2006).

defined seismic source zones not dissimilar to those of
Al-Haddad et al. (1994) within Iran, but also defined
two smaller zones (Regions III and VII) that effec-
tively link the stable UAE with the active areas of the
Zagros and Makran regions (Figure 4). In particular,
Region III
for which a maximum magnitude of 6
was specified
smoothes the seismicity from the
southern limit of the Zagros across the Gulf and
assumes that these earthquakes could equally occur
along the coast of the Emirates. No clear rationale is
given for the configuration of this source zone, indeed
the authors state that, with regard to the absence of a
seismic source zone in the northeast of the Arabian
Peninsula within the Al-Haddad et al. (1994) study,
‘‘ . . . there is no clearly defined tectonic structure in
that area and no significant earthquake activity. It
would be very difficult to define a seismic source to
capture the very limited earthquake [data] in that
area.’’ There is little doubt that the geometry of
Region III, in which it is assumed that the earth-
quakes, which are clearly clustered along its northern
boundary, have equal probability of occurring any-
where within the source zone, will have appreciably
inflated the hazard along its southern boundary
within the UAE. Similarly, Region VII
for which
a maximum magnitude of 7.5 is assigned
combines
parts of the Arabian stable craton, the Zagros
compression zone and the Zagros-Makran transition
zone (Minab-Zendan fault system); this source zone
will also have contributed to inflating the seismic
hazard estimates within the UAE.
An additional factor that is likely to have
contributed to the rather high estimates of hazard
in the Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004) study is the
use of the ground-motion prediction equation derived
from Iranian strong-motion data by Zaré (2002). The
 10 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
standard deviation of the residuals of log10(PGA) for
this equation is 0.334, which is very high when
compared to other predictive equations for PGA
(c.f., Douglas 2003) and this large aleatory variability
will have contributed to high hazard estimates (e.g.,
Bommer and Abrahamson 2006). The resulting
hazard map for the UAE for PGA with a 475-year
return period indicates values of 0.16g, 0.15g and
0.10g for Ra’s Al Khaymah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi
respectively, which would lead to all three cities being
classified as UBC97 Zone 2A.
More recently, Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006)
presented a new hazard study focused only on Dubai.
The results were presented in terms of uniform hazard
spectra for return periods of 974 and 2475 years, as
well as synthetic accelerograms for use in dynamic
analyses. The paper presents neither a map of the
seismic source zones considered nor tabulates the
recurrence parameters used in the hazard calcula-
tions, but indicates that the zonation was based on
the work of Tavakoli and Ghafory-Ashtiany (1999)
for Iran but also included the Dibba fault and a fault
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along the western coast of the UAE. The latter source
was also considered by Wyss and Al-Homoud (2004)
and is present in the tectonic map of Saudi Arabia
and adjacent areas by Johnson (1998). The inclusion
of this fault is a controversial issue that is discussed
later in Section 5. Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006)
use the ground-motion prediction equations of Am-
braseys et al. (1996) and Simpson (1996), extending
the coefficients from a maximum period of 2 s up to 4
s. These equations, derived from recordings of
shallow crustal earthquakes in Europe, North Africa
and the Middle East, are applied to all source zones,
including the subduction earthquakes in the Makran.
The results are presented in the form of a hazard
curve for PGA and UHS for Dubai for the two return
periods considered.
The hazard levels indicated by the Sigbjörnsson
and Elnashai (2006) study are actually higher than
those found by Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004),
which themselves are considered to be conservative.
In contrast with the relatively high hazard esti-
mates presented by Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004)
and by Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006), two other
recent studies have indicated much lower levels of
seismic hazard in the UAE. However, whereas the
two previous studies have appeared in a peer-
reviewed journal, these other studies have been
published in conference proceedings and as an inter-
nal report respectively, so their impact has been
reduced. The first of these is by Peiris et al. (2006)
who present UHS for rock sites in Dubai and Abu
Dhabi for return periods of 475 and 2475 years. Their
seismic source zonation (Figure 4) is consistent with
those of Al-Haddad et al. (1994) for the Arabian
Peninsula and of Tavakoli and Ghafory-Ashtiany
(1999) for Iran, and also with the regional tectonics.
However, the recurrence parameters, for example for
the Zagros region, differ from those given by
Tavakoli and Ghafory-Ashtiany (1999), with much
higher b-values in the Peiris et al. (2006) study. The
paper does not explain how the recurrence para-
meters for the Arabian stable craton are obtained

which according to their own disaggregation is the
dominant seismic source for hazard in Dubai
which
is an important issue given the very sparse earthquake
data in this area.
Peiris et al. (2006) used the ground-motion pre-
diction equations of Ambraseys et al. (1996) and
Sadigh et al. (1997) for active crustal regions as well
as for earthquakes in the Makran subduction zone.
For areas of tectonic extension in the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean they employed the equations of Spu-
dich et al. (1999) and for the stable craton of the
Arabian Peninsula the equations of Atkinson and
Boore (1997) and Dahle et al. (1990), even though the
latter are now generally considered to be obsolete.
For Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Peiris et al. (2006)
estimate the 475-year PGA values as 0.06g and 0.05g
respectively, which would correspond to Zone 1
UBC97 classification for both cities. The uniform
hazard spectrum for rock sites in Dubai for a return
period of 2475 years is a factor of 5 or more lower
than that of Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006) in the
short-period range.
A more recent study of the seismic hazard of the
UAE is that presented by Musson et al. (2006), which
was performed by the British Geological Survey on
behalf of the government of the UAE. The study
produced maps of PGA in rock for return periods of
475, 1000 and 10 000 years, as well as UHS for the
capital cities of the seven Emirates up to response
periods of 2 s for the same three return periods.
The seismic source zonation defined by Musson
et al. (2006)
reproduced in Figure 4
is generally
consistent with the tectonics and seismicity of the
region. One interesting observation, however, is that
they effectively conclude that the western portion of
the Makran zone is almost aseismic, relocating the
1483 Hormuz earthquake to a position 250 km
northeast of where it was located by Ambraseys
and Melville (1982). Musson et al. (2006) support this
decision by performing sensitivity analyses to show
the influence of the seismic activity in the western
Makran region is very small for response periods up
to 1.0 s and a return period of 475 years.
In terms of ground-motion prediction equations,
Musson et al. (2006) employ the Ambraseys et al.
(1996) equations for spectral ordinates and the
 Georisk
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Figure 5. Hazard zonation of the UAE in terms of UBC97 zones by Musson et al. (2006).
Ambraseys (1995) equation for PGA, for all seismic
source zones including the stable craton of the
Arabian Peninsula and the Makran subduction
zone. The PGA map at 475 years is used to assign
an equivalent UBC97 zonation to the country (Figure
5); the peak accelerations in Ra’s Al Khaymah,
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are respectively 0.08g, 0.05g
and 0.035g, leading to classification of Ra’s Al
Khaymah as Zone 1 and the other two cities as
Zone 0.
The most recent study is that by Husein Malkawi
et al. (2007), which presents hazard curves for 15
major cities in the Emirates. The study treats all
earthquakes in the Makran, Zagros and stable
regions as a single source, and applies a single
ground-motion prediction equation for all events,
the eastern North American equation of Atkinson
and Boore (1997) for PGA on very hard rock sites.
Response spectra are then constructed by finding
magnitude-distance pairs consistent with the PGA
values
corresponding to different return periods

and applying the western North American equations
of Joyner and Boore (1988). The hazard results are
not reported herein because there are sufficient
shortcomings in the study to make its findings highly
questionable.
In summary, the existing published studies of
seismic hazard in the UAE present an incomplete and
contradictory image. Although there are clear reasons
to treat the higher hazard estimates from GSHAP,
11
Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004) and Sigbjörnsson
and Elnashai (2006) as being suspect, the studies of
Peiris et al. (2006) and Musson et al. (2006) cannot be
considered definitive in terms of their treatment of the
regional seismic sources and the selection of appro-
priate ground-motion prediction equations. There-
fore, there is scope and justification for a new PSHA
for the Emirates, accounting for uncertainty in the
seismicity and ground-motion models, and making
use of the latest available data.
Seismic hazard analysis
This section describes the calculations performed to
estimate the seismic hazard in the cities of Abu
Dhabi, Dubai and Ra’s Al Khaymah in terms of
PGA and spectral ordinates on rock sites.
Source zones
On the basis of the literature review of the seismo-
tectonic setting briefly summarised in section 2, 20
distinct seismic sources were identified and included
within the seismic source model. These sources
principally relate to the Zagros fold and thrust belts,
with the work of Berberian (1995) heavily used to
partition this overall region into various sub-sources:
the Makran subduction zone, with alternative rupture
hypotheses regarding the segmentation of this struc-
ture; the Minab-Zendan transform region forming
 12 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.

Table 1. Seismic sources identified for the PSHA of this study.

Source number Source name Source number Source name

1 High Zagros thrust belt 11 Makran Intraplate

2 Simple Fold belt 12 Makran background
3 Dezful Embayment 13 Sabzevaran-Jorift fault
4 Zagros Foredeep 14 Minab-Zendan fault
5 Persian Gulf (I, II & III) 15 Stable craton (I, II & III)
6 Kazerurn fault 16 Owen fracture zone
7 Borazjan fault 17 Oman mountains
8 Aliabad zone I8 Makran interplate
9 Nek south fault 19 Makran Inter east
10 Gowk fault zone 20 Makran Inter west

the interface of the two previous regions; and the
Oman Mountains. In addition to these key seismo-
tectonic structures, the stable craton that constitutes
most of the Arabian Peninsula was treated as a
background source. The full list of identified seismic
sources is given in Table 1. In this table sources 5 and
15 have three alternative designations (I, II & III)
representing alternative source zonations that have
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far south the seismicity of the southern Zagros is
presumed to occur, with obvious implications for
hazard in the UAE.
In Figure 6 the preferred seismic source model (I)
is shown together with the alternative locations of the
boundaries between sources 5 and 15, with the
declustered seismicity catalogue used for the deriva-
tion of the activity parameters, as discussed in the

been considered for these sources. These alternatives
are considered in order to account for the epistemic
uncertainty associated with the location of the
boundary between sources 5 and 15. Of course, there
is also uncertainty associated with the boundary
locations of all sources. However, the boundary
between these particular sources is offshore and is
relatively poorly constrained as a consequence.
Furthermore, the location of this boundary is critical
from a source zonation perspective as it dictates how
next section. The preferred source model shown in
Figure 6 includes a distinct source 4 corresponding to
the Zagros Foredeep, a zonation that is consistent
with the cross section of Berberian (1995). However,
the plot of the seismicity shown in Figure 6 indicates
that events occur either side of this boundary between
sources 4 and 5. Although we are confident about the
existence of the blind Zagros Foredeep fault that
defines the boundary between sources 4 and 5, it is
possible that this boundary may be located farther

Figure 6. Seismic source models employed for the PSHA presented in this study. The numbers relate to the sources listed in
Table 1. The dashed lines indicate alternative source boundaries for the southern Zagros and the declustered seismicity
catalogue used to derive activity parameters for the seismic sources. WCF West Coast Fault. Within sources 6, 7, 13 and 14
dotted-dashed lines indicate the traces of the faults.
 Georisk
south than shown in Figure 6 or that the seismicity
that is observed to the south of this boundary is
driven by a similar mechanism to that within the
Zagros Foredeep itself. For this reason we hypothe-
size two additional source zonations: Zone II com-
bines the seismicity of sources 4 and 5 into a single
source and shifts the preferred boundary between
sources 5 and 15 slightly northwards; Zone III also
combines sources 4 and 5 but retains the preferred
southern position of the boundary between sources
5 and 15.
The implications of these alternatives is that in the
preferred model, using Zone I, the seismicity of the
Zagros Foredeep is constrained to occur within or
close to the southern coast of Iran while the seismicity
of the Persian Gulf is encompassed within a separate
seismic source. For the second model, corresponding
to Zone II in Figure 6, most of the seismicity that has
been observed within the Persian Gulf is combined
with the seismicity of the Zagros Foredeep and the
more northerly boundary between sources 5 and 15
means that more earthquakes are located within the
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stable craton (source 15). The final model ensures
that no seismicity is inadvertently pushed into the
stable craton, but the seismicity of the Zagros
Foredeep will govern the activity rates for the
combined sources 4 and 5 under this zonation. In
this case the southern boundary of the combined
source passes relatively close to the cities of Ra’s Al
Kaymah and Dubai with the implication that rela-
tively high rates of earthquake activity are modelled
to occur within the Persian Gulf at distances that may
affect the hazard of the cities just mentioned.
In Figure 6 one may observe that sources 6, 7, 13
and 14 are shown as dotted-dashed lines that indicate
fault sources. This is also implied by the naming
convention used in Table 1. In these cases, the lines
that surround the dashed lines indicate regions for
which the observed seismicity is assumed to be
associated with the fault sources. In these locations
it is known that dominant fault sources exist but that
there is also distributed seismicity around these fault
sources. By modelling these sources as fault sources,
but assigning seismicity to these faults within an area
around the faults, we are assuming that this seismicity
is directly related to the deformation accommodated
by the fault sources.
The remaining clarification that must be made
regarding the adopted source model relates to the
partitioning of the Makran subduction zone into
Makran interplate, inter east and inter west sources
(Table 1). These alternatives have been selected so as
to entertain the possibility that the interface of the
Makran subduction zone may be segmented as
mentioned in section 2. For source 18, the entire
13
subduction interface is allowed to rupture in a single
event while sources 19 and 20 correspond to the
situation where the zone is segmented and the east
and west sections of the interface rupture indepen-
dently.
Recurrence parameters
With the exception of the Makran subduction zone
(sources 18, 19 and 20) all seismic sources were
assumed to generate earthquakes according to a
doubly bounded exponential distribution (Cornell
and Vanmarcke 1969). Sources 18 to 20 were
modelled using the characteristic earthquake distri-
bution of Youngs and Coppersmith (1985). Often,
fault sources are assumed to act in a characteristic
manner and this may suggest that sources 6, 7, 9, 13
and 14 may be more appropriately modelled using the
characteristic distribution. However, for these sources
there was insufficient geological data to adequately
constrain the recurrence rates of the largest events.
Furthermore, the seismicity data that was available
did not indicate any significant departures from the
predictions of the doubly bounded exponential dis-
tribution and for this reason this latter model was
adopted owing to its simplicity.
The seismicity catalogue has varying levels of
completeness and these must be accounted for when
deriving activity parameters for the seismic sources.
For this reason the parameters of the doubly
bounded exponential distribution were obtained
using the maximum likelihood estimation procedure
of Weichert (1980). This procedure allows the activity
parameters b and nmin to be determined where these
parameters are related to the a- and b-values of
the original Gutenberg-Richter (1944) distribution
(see Weichert 1980). For the sources whose magni-
tude-frequency distributions were modelled with the
characteristic earthquake distribution, seismic-mo-
ment release rates were determined from estimates
of fault-slip rates and the assumed fault geometries.
These moment release rates were then used in
conjunction with the model of Youngs and Copper-
smith (1985) in order to quantify the magnitude-
frequency characteristics of the sources. The activity
parameters for the Oman Mountains (source 17) were
derived in a similar manner but using the doubly
bounded exponential distribution instead of the
characteristic model. Rates of uplift were used to
infer slip rates, and moment release rates, that then
enabled activity parameters to be determined.
For the Arabian stable craton, different values of
b were used on the basis of two publications. The first
of these is Fenton et al. (2006) who propose a b value
of 1.84 as a world average for seismicity in stable
 14 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
cratonic cores and an annual long-term rate of 0.004
events per 106 km2 for events of Mw ] 6. The second
study is that of Johnson et al. (1994) who report a b
value of 2.26 as an average over all stable continental
regions and an annual occurrence rate for events of
Mw ] 6, essentially the same as that of Fenton et al.
(2006). For this source the nmin values were calculated
by fixing the b values within Weichert’s (1980)
procedure and fitting the curves to the observed
Arabian stable craton seismicity. Sensitivity analyses
were conducted assigning a weight of 1 to each of the
two b values is turn (and zero to the other one), and
the influence on the resulting hazard curves was
found to be low.
For estimation of the maximum magnitude for
each source, the relations proposed by Wells and
Coppersmith (1994) were used when consistent data
regarding fault type and total length of the faults
were able to be retrieved. When this was not possible,
the maximum magnitude was estimated using the
statistical procedure proposed by Kijko (2004),
specifically by making use of equations (4) and (6)
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of that study. In any remaining case the maximum
magnitude was obtained by adding 0.5 units to the
maximum observed magnitude. While this practice is
not ideal, the paucity of data related to these sources
dictated that it was difficult to justify the use of more
elaborate approaches. The seismicity parameters
assumed for each seismic source are given in Table 2.
Ground-motion prediction equations
Just as alternative seismic source models were
adopted in section 4.1 to account for the epistemic
uncertainty associated with not knowing the true
locations of seismic source boundaries, alternative
ground-motion models were selected for use within
the various tectonic provinces considered in this
study. In total, seven different ground-motion models
were considered, selected following the guidelines
proposed by Cotton et al. (2006). All of these models
are either recent updates of previous, well regarded
and commonly implemented models, or are older
models that have been used extensively in hazard
analyses throughout the world.
The models of Youngs et al. (1997) and Atkinson
and Boore (2003) were used to model the ground
motions from subduction zone earthquakes occurring
within the Makran sources. For earthquakes occur-
ring within the active shallow crustal sources the
ground-motion models of Abrahamson and Silva
(1997), Ambraseys et al. (2005), Boore and Atkinson
(2007), and Akkar and Bommer (2007) were used.
For earthquakes occurring within the stable craton
(source 15) the model of Atkinson and Boore (2006)
was used in conjunction with the equations for the
active shallow crustal sources. The largest weight
(0.55) is assigned to the model for stable regions, but
it is acknowledged that the definition of the Arabian
Peninsula as a stable craton is not unambiguously
confirmed and given the proximity of the Emirates to
actively deforming regions, branches are included in
the logic-tree that allow for the fact ground motions
may be more similar to those from active crustal
regions. For the active regions such as the Zagros,
two of the equations are derived from datasets of
European and Middle Eastern strong-motion data
that include records from Iran, and there is increasing
evidence that motions in western North America are
broadly similar to those from this region (e.g.,
Stafford et al. 2008).
All of these models were incorporated within a
logic tree framework (described in detail in section
4.4). The various models that are used require the
specification of different input parameters, adopt
different site classification schemes and estimate the
distribution of ground motions in terms of different
horizontal component definitions. A summary of the
properties of the suite of selected ground-motion
models is given in Table 3.
In order to implement these models within a logic
tree these alternative inputs and outputs must be
transformed into common metrics (Bommer et al.
2005). As may be appreciated from Table 3, all of the
models use the same magnitude scale (Mw) and this
scale is different to that used to characterise the
seismic sources. For this reason, the Ambraseys and
Free (1997) relationship was used to transform the
ground-motion models into the surface-wave magni-
tude scale. Fortunately, the software used to perform
the hazard calculations, Crisis 2007 (Ordaz et al.
2007), uses tabulated ground-motion values to define
the level of ground-motion corresponding to a
particular magnitude-distance scenario. This frame-
work enables this magnitude conversion to be im-
plemented very easily. Likewise, the conversions
among distance metrics are handled in a straightfor-
ward manner using this software package (in actual
fact, conversions are not required). Although the
model of Abrahamson and Silva (1997) adopts a
slightly different site classification scheme, the differ-
ence is not considered great enough to warrant
making any adjustments for this aspect of this model.
The only significant adjustment that was required in
order to implement the models in a consistent manner
was to adjust the predictions of the Ambraseys et al.
(2005) from the larger horizontal component to the
geometric mean using the relationships of Beyer and
Bommer (2006).
 Georisk 15
Table 2. Seismicity parameters for all of the seismic sources listed in Table 1. Where alternative models of the source
boundaries are relevant the seismicity parameters corresponding to each of the alternatives are provided.

Doubly-bounded Exponential Seismicity

N of
Zone/Region Mmax s(Mmax) Mmax(Obs) Mmin events b s(b) b s(b) vmin s(vmin) a

All Catalogue 8.0 4.0 1290 1.66 0.037 0.72 0.016 24.10 0.019 4.26
Zagros 7.2 0.12 7.1 4.0 840 1.86 0.055 0.81 0.024 17.24 0.021 4.47
High Zagros 6.8 0.20 6.6 4.0 55 1.52 0.203 0.66 0.088 1.07 0.019 2.67
Simple Fold 7.3 0.17 7.1 4.0 456 1.91 0.075 0.83 0.033 9.56 0.021 4.31
Dezful Embayment 5.8 0.14 5.7 4.0 122 1.77 0.186 0.77 0.081 2.56 0.021 3.51
Zagros Foredeep 6.9 0.14 6.8 4.0 83 1.40 0.157 0.61 0.068 1.56 0.019 2.63
Persian Gulf I 6.1 0.23 5.9 4.0 52 1.78 0.261 0.77 0.113 1.08 0.021 3.14
Persian Gulf II 6.9 0.12 6.8 4.0 129 1.57 0.133 0.68 0.058 2.52 0.020 3.14
Persian Gulf III 6.9 0.12 6.8 4.0 135 1.59 0.130 0.69 0.057 2.65 0.020 3.18
Kaserum Fault 6.8* 0.23* 6.0 4.0 24 1.45 0.301 0.63 0.131 0.45 0.019 2.18
Borazjan Fault 6.9* 0.23* 5.5 4.0 27 2.10 0.348 0.91 0.151 0.58 0.021 3.41
Makran 8.2 0.24 8.0 4.0 401 1.76 0.070 0.76 0.031 8.02 0.070 3.96
Aliabad zone 6.5 0.16 6.4 4.0 90 1 95 0.187 0.85 0.081 1.89 0.021 3.66
Nek south fault 8.0*; 0.28* 7.0 4.0 7 0 99 0.363 0.43 0.158 0.11 0.016 0.77
8.0
Gowk fault zone 8.1*; 0.28* 7.0 4.0 62 1 76 0.179 0.77 0.078 1.24 0.000 3.16
8.0
Makran Interplate LT 0.00 8.0 4.0 85 1 83 0.162 0.79 0.070 1.64 0.020 3.40
Makran Interplate East LT 0.00 8.0 4.0 62 1 74 0.182 0.76 0.079 1.18 0.020 3.10
Makran Interplate West LT 0.00 7.7 4.0 22 2 06 0.358 0.89 0.155 0.44 0.021 3.22
Makran Intraplate 6.8 0.24 6.6 4.0 54 1 63 0.212 0.71 0.092 1.07 0.020 2.87
Makran Background 7.5 0.50 7.0 4.0 87 1 66 0.149 0.72 0.065 1.71 0.020 3.11
Jorift-Sabzevaran fault 6.7* 0.28* 5.7 4.0 21 2 42 0.448 1.05 0.195 0.47 0.022 3.87
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010

Minab-Zendan fault 6.5* 0.28* 5.8 4.0 11 1 25 0.455 0.54 0.198 0.20 0.018 1.49
Stable craton I & III 7.0** 0.50 6.5 4.0 13 LT LT LT LT LT LT LT
Stable craton II 7.0** 0.50 6.5 4.0 19 LT LT LT LT LT LT LT
Owen fracture zone 6.0 0.20 5.8 4.0 26 1.57 0.364 0.68 0.158 0.52 0.020 2.47
Oman Mountains LT LT 5.1 4.0 5 1.00 LT 0.43 LT LT LT LT

Characteristic seismicity

Occurrence
Interval
Zone/Region Option Mmax Mmin Mch s(Mch) (yr)

Makran Interplate WSZ1 8.5* 7.8 8.2 0.25* 203

WSZ2 8.6* 7.9 8.3 0.25* 428
Makran Interplate East WSZ1 8.3* 7.5 8.0 0.25* 139
WSZ2 8.5* 7.8 8.2 0.25* 422
Makran Interplate West WSZ1 8.2* 7.4 7.8 0.25* 121
WSZ2 8.4* 7.6 8.0 0.25* 356

Notes:
 Proposed by Berberian & Yeats (1999).
* Calculated using Wells & Coppersmith’s (1994) relationships.
** Maximum magnitude observed plus 0.5.
LT-See logic tree.
WSZ 1 and WSZ 2 are the two likely widths considered for the seismogenic zone in Makran Interplate.
All magnitudes are in Ms scale. When not specified, maximum magnitude was calculated using the procedure proposed by
Kijko (2004).
Bold numbers are the regional earthquake recurrence parameters for the whole catalogue, Zagros and Makran regions.

Hazard calculations mum magnitude but was selected so as to be

All of the hazard calculations were performed using
the Crisis 2007 software (Ordaz et al. 2007). The
software is essentially an implementation of the
Cornell (1968) PSHA framework, with the aleatory
variability in the ground-motion explicitly included
(Bommer and Abrahamson 2006). All sources were
assumed to behave in a Poissonian manner and only
earthquakes of Ms ]4.0 were deemed to be of
engineering significance. This is a rather low mini-
conservative. Events as small as Ms 4.0 are very
unlikely to cause damage to engineered structures
(Bommer et al. 2001).
The alternative seismic source zonations, activity
rates and ground-motion models that have previously
been discussed are all incorporated into the hazard
calculations through the use of the logic tree for-
mulation shown in Figure 7. In this figure, all of the
parameter values and the weights assigned to each of
 16
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Table 3. Summary of the characteristics of the ground-motion models used in this study.

Horizontal
Magnitude Distance Dmax** component
Equation scale Mmin*** Mmax*** Site conditions* defintion (km) definition Faulting mechanism Tectonic enviroment

Abrahamson & Silva Mw 4.4 7.4 Rock [Vs 600 m/s] Rrup 220 Geometric mean Reverse/ Reverse- Active regions,
[1997] Oblique/Others shallow earthquakes

G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
Akkar & Bommer Mw 5.0 7.6 Rock [Vs 750 m/s] RJB 100 Geometric mean Normal/Reverse Active regions,
[2007] shallow earthquakes
Ambraseys et al Mw 5.0 7.6 Rock [Vs 750 m/s] RJB 100 Larger horizontal Normal/Thrust/ Active regions,
[2005] component Odd shallow earthquakes
Atkinson & Boore Mw 5.0 8.3 Rock [Vs 760 m/s] Rrup 550 Random Interface/ In-Slab Active regions,
[2003] horizontal subduction zones
component
Atkinson & Boore Mw 3.5 8.0 Rock [Vs 760 m/s] Rrup 1000 Unspecified Unspecified Stable continental
[2006] regions
Boore & Atkinson Mw 4.2 7.9 Rock [Vs 760 m/s] RJB 300 GMRotD50; Unspecified/ Strike- Active regions,
[2007] GMRotI50 slip/Normal/Reverse shallow earthquakes
Youngs et al. [1997] Mw 5.0 8.2 Rock [Vs 750 m/s] Rrup 500 Geometric mean Interface/ In-Slab Active regions,
subduction zones

Notes:
*-Site condition considered for this study. Other site conditions are reported by the modelers.
**-Maximum distance source-to-site distance m data set.
***-Maximum and minimum magnitudes in data set.
 Georisk 17
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Figure 7. Components of the logic tree used for the hazard calculations showing all of the alternative branches and their
associated weights.
 18 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
Figure 8. Disaggregation results for Abu Dhabi for a return period of 500 years and for PGA and spectral accelerations of
0.2, 1.0 and 3.0 s.
the various alternatives are shown. There are four
components of the tree that relate to source zonations
and activity rates and one component that relates to
the ground-motion models. For the uncertainty
associated with the location of the boundaries
between sources 4, 5 and 15 in the southern Zagros
and the Persian Gulf weights of 0.6, 0.25, and 0.15
were allocated to options I, II and III respectively. In
all cases, the weights that have been assigned to
branches have been done so on a subjective basis
through discussion among the authors. In most cases
the extent of the uncertainty is such that we saw little
option other than to allocate equal, or very similar,
weighting to the various options. In other cases
however, such as for the source boundaries just
mentioned, or for the segmentation of the Makran,
we have greater confidence in a particular model and
have allocated a weight that reflects this. However,
where possible we have sought to acknowledge
alternative legitimate viewpoints and to include these
as alternatives into our formulation.
The activity rates of the stable craton from the
studies of Johnson et al. (1994) and Fenton et al.
(2006) have been allocated similar weights, with
slightly higher weight assigned to the latter study
reflecting the more recent nature of this work. The
activity rates for the Oman Mountains involve a
series of branches that reflect the large degree of
uncertainty associated with the rate of coseismic
deformation in this region. The complexity of this
component of the logic tree is justified given the
relatively close proximity of this source to the sites of
interest in this study. The scenario involving segmen-
ted rupture of the Makran is strongly favoured,
primarily on the basis of recorded earthquake activ-
ity. Additional uncertainty is also incorporated into
this component of the logic tree to account for the
unknown extent to which the subduction interface
extends down-dip. For this component the shorter
rupture width is preferred on the basis of the
observed seismicity, but only slightly so, and is given
a weighting of 0.6.
 Georisk
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Figure 9. Disaggregation results for Dubai for a return period of 500 years and for PGA and spectral accelerations of 0.2, 1.0
and 3.0 s.
For the ground-motion models in the stable
craton the model of Atkinson and Boore (2006) is
strongly favoured with a weight of 0.55 being
allocated to this model and 0.45 spread among the
remaining four crustal models. The active shallow
crustal models are all given equal weight when used
for modelling ground-motions from earthquakes
occurring in the shallow crustal sources. Finally, the
more recent subduction zone model of Atkinson and
Boore (2003) is favoured quite strongly over the older
Youngs et al. (1997) model.
The net result of accounting for the various model
alternatives was to require 5184 hazard curves, and
corresponding hazard disaggregations, to be gener-
ated. Annual rates of exceedance were determined for
spectral accelerations (including peak ground accel-
eration, PGA) ranging from 0.001g to 1.0g. To enable
comparison with previous studies, the suite of hazard
curves were summarised by taking the mean of the
19
rates of occurrence corresponding to each considered
level of ground motion.
Disaggregation of the hazard
For every hazard curve that was generated during the
hazard calculations the level of ground-motion cor-
responding to return periods of 500, 1000, 2500, 5000,
and 10 000 years was determined and the associated
rate of occurrence disaggregated in order to identify
the magnitude-distance scenarios contributing most
significantly to the hazard (Bazzurro and Cornell
1999). As we adopt the weighted mean of the hazard
curves in order to summarise the hazard results we
may also determine the weighted mean of the
disaggregation results in order to summarise the
relative contributions made by the various magni-
tude-distance scenarios. The disaggregated results for
the 500-year return period for the three sites and for
5%-damped spectral accelerations at periods of 0
 20 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
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Figure 10. Disaggregation results for Ra’s Al Khaymah for a return period of 500 years and for PGA and spectral
accelerations of 0.2, 1.0 and 3.0 s.
(PGA), 0.2, 1.0 and 3.0 s are shown in Figures 8
to 10.
From Figure 8 to 10 one may readily appreciate
that as one moves to spectral accelerations at longer
response periods the main contribution to the hazard
increasingly comes from larger magnitude events
located at greater distances. Such a result is to be
expected as the seismic sources that are very close to
the sites in question tend to have relatively low
activity rates and one is therefore rather unlikely to
observe large magnitude events at short distances. As
larger magnitude earthquakes are far more likely to
generate strong long-period components of ground
motion than their small-to-moderate counterparts the
contribution to the hazard expectedly moves to larger
magnitude events as the response period increases.
One may also appreciate from Figure 8 to 10 that
as we move from Abu Dhabi in the south to Ra’s Al
Khaymah in the north the relative contributions of
the Zagros and Makran regions to the hazard at short
periods increases. Again, this is a result that may be
anticipated. For short-period ground-motion mea-
sures such as PGA and spectral acceleration at 0.2 s,
the rate of attenuation with distance is relatively high.
This attenuation rate precludes the possibility of Abu
Dhabi being strongly affected by seismicity associated
with the Zagros and the hazard is consequently
dominated by events occurring within the stable
craton. As one moves to Ra’s Al Khaymah the
distance to the Zagros becomes small enough that
the hazard begins to become affected by seismicity
from this source. This effect is clearly demonstrated
through contrasting the top panels of Figures 8
and 10.
One should also note that, particularly for spec-
tral accelerations of 1.0 and 3.0 s, the magnitude
distance scenarios contributing most significantly to
the hazard correspond to scenarios that are well
beyond the ranges of applicability of the ground-
motion models used for the analysis (at Abu Dhabi,
the dominant scenario at 1.0 and 3.0 s is at about
400 km). For these scenarios the hazard values must
 Georisk
Figure 11. Seismic hazard curves for PGA and 1-s spectral acceleration at rock sites in the three cities.
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
be interpreted with a considerable degree of caution,
but as few, if any, current empirical equations are
valid for such large magnitudes and such long
distances, this is a common, and almost unavoidable,
problem.
For all sites the largest contribution to the seismic
hazard for short-period ground-motion measures
comes from the stable craton. Modifying the activity
rates for this source will therefore have a significant
impact upon the calculated hazard. The activity rates
for the stable craton were determined on the basis of
published studies that consider large composite
catalogues of stable continental regions and stable
cratonic cores; they were not derived specifically for
the Arabian Peninsula itself. This point is worth
emphasising as there is significant uncertainty asso-
ciated with the rates of events within such stable
regions (Fenton et al., 2006) and one must be aware
of the sensitivity of the results to the assumptions
made regarding the activity of this background
source. However, it is also clear that these sources
only contribute significantly to the seismic hazard as
a result of the relatively low seismic activity of the
region. The fact that the hazard is dominated by very
small earthquakes close to the sites of interest, and
that these events correspond to a seismic source of
low activity, reinforces the view that the seismic
hazard for sites within the UAE is low.
Discussion of results
Figure 11 shows seismic hazard curves for rock sites
in the three cities in terms of PGA and in terms of 1.0-
21
s spectral acceleration. The values are very similar at
the three sites although as expected there is an
increase in the hazard level from south to north
owing to the increasing proximity of the Zagros zone.
However, at long return periods, for which the local
seismic activity becomes dominant, particularly for
the short-period motions, the hazard curves converge.
Figure 12 shows the uniform hazard spectra on rock
for the three cities at return periods ranging from 500
to 10 000 years.
Direct comparisons between the results of this
new study and those of previous hazard estimates for
the UAE are limited by the incomplete information
regarding definitions of site conditions and horizontal
component definitions provided in the earlier studies.
All of the studies state that the hazard estimates are
for rock sites, with the exception of Sigbjörnsson and
Elnashai (2006) who do not specify the assumed site
classification; for the purpose of the comparisons
made herein, it is simply assumed that the site
conditions are uniformly rock and therefore no
adjustments are needed. In terms of the definition
of the horizontal component of motion, different
measures can give appreciably different results (Beyer
and Bommer 2006), but none of the studies explicitly
state the definition used. The current study has used
the geometric mean horizontal component, whereas
by virtue of the ground motion equations employed
the studies of both Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006)
and Musson et al. (2006) are based on the larger
horizontal component. Abdalla and Al-Homoud
(2004) use a ground motion equation based on both
horizontal components of each accelerogram, which
 22 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
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Figure 12. Uniform hazard spectra for rock sites in the three cities.

can broadly be considered equivalent to the geometric
mean component (Beyer and Bommer 2006). Peiris
et al. (2006), however, use a number of different
ground-motion prediction equations that use differ-
ent component definitions, and state neither whether
adjustments were made for compatibility nor which
component is used for the output. For comparative
purposes, it is assumed that their results represent the
geometric mean component as this is the definition
employed in most of the ground-motion prediction
equations used in their study.
Figure 13 compares the 475-year UHS for Dubai
from the current study with those from Peiris et al.
(2006) and Musson et al. (2006), whereas Figure 14
compares the 2,475-year UHS for Dubai from this
study with those from Peiris et al. (2006) and
Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006).
These figures show generally good agreement
amongst the results of this study and those from
Peiris et al. (2006) and Musson et al. (2006), and as no
major flaws were identified in either of those studies
this could be favourably interpreted as corroboration
of the new results. Comparisons with the results of
Musson et al. (2006) for all three sites and longer
return periods show consistently close agreement,
although the spectral ordinates from Musson et al.
(2006) are generally slighter higher. However, this
could largely be the result of the use of different
component definitions: Beyer and Bommer (2006)
found ratios of the larger component to the geometric
 Georisk
Figure 13. Uniform hazard spectra for rock sites in Dubai
for a 475-year return period from this study and those of
Peiris et al. (2006) and Musson et al. (2006).
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
mean component increasing with period from about
1.1 to 1.2 at periods of 1.0 second and greater. These
correction factors cannot be applied directly to the
UHS but do allow one to suppose that much of the
observed disagreement would be removed had these
studies used the same horizontal component defini-
tion.
The spectrum from Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai
(2006), however, is clearly very different from the
Figure 14. Uniform hazard spectra for rock sites in Dubai
for a 2475-year return period from this study and those of
Peiris et al. (2006) and Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006).
23
other studies, resulting in spectral accelerations as
much as 6 times higher at some response periods.
Even accounting for the use of equations based on the
larger horizontal component, this study is still pre-
senting a fundamentally different picture of the
seismic hazard in the UAE. The information pro-
vided in the paper by Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai
(2006) is not sufficient to be able to determine exactly
why the calculated hazard is so much higher, but the
definition the fault along the western coast of the
UAE as an active seismic source seems to be one of
the key contributing factors (see discussion below).
Given the absence of any convincing evidence for the
activity of this source, the spectral ordinates of
Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006) shown in Figure
14 could be considered extremely conservative.
Figure 15 compares the 475-year uniform hazard
spectra for the three cities with the spectrum for rock
(class B, which corresponds to shear-wave velocities
between 760 and 1,500 m/s consistent with the site
classification assumed in the hazard calculations)
sites in Zone 1 from UBC97.
Figure 15 indicates that all three cities could
conceivably be classified as UBC97 Zone 0, although
cogent arguments could be made for considering Ra’s
Al Khaymah, and possibly even Dubai if one wishes
to err on the conservative side, as Zone 1. To raise
seismic design actions to Zone 1 in Abu Dhabi would
be difficult to justify given how far below the spectral
ordinates the UHS is across the entire period range.
These results are very much in line with the zonation
map of Musson et al. (2006) presented in Figure 5.
The possible existence of a major active geological
fault running along the west coast of the UAE is
clearly an issue of concern, and a definitive assess-
ment of the seismic hazard in the Emirates will need
to resolve this matter. The seismic hazard studies that
have included this fault, which we have called the
West Coast Fault (WCF), as an active seismic source,
are based on the Tectonic Map of Saudi Arabia and
Adjacent Areas by Johnson (1998). That study drew
heavily on an earlier work by Brown (1972) which
presented ‘‘selected tectonic elements of Saudi Arabia
and, in lesser details, elements in adjacent parts of the
Arabian Peninsula’’ (Johnson 1998), whence it is not
clear how reliable the information is for the UAE.
Amongst the publications on the geology of this
region that were reviewed, including Al-Hinai et al.
(1997), Glennie (2001) and Lippard et al. (1982), only
Hancock et al. (1984) refer to a fault near the west
coast of the Emirates, but the mapped trace is
annotated with a question mark and no details are
presented in the text.
Notwithstanding the weak evidence for the
existence of this fault, for the purposes of this
 24 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.

Figure 15. 475-year UHS for rock sites in the three cities compared with the spectrum from UBC97 for class B sites in Zone 1.

sensitivity analysis we assume that it is a 322-km
vertically dipping strike-slip fault running from
23.878N, 53.598E to 25.768N, 56.038E (Figure 6),
based on the map of Johnson (1998). This trace
crosses the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
the available information. The data used for this
purpose are contours of the base of the Tertiary and
the approximate base of the Mesozoic rocks that are
overlain by sediments known as sabkhas, which are
composed of sand, silt or clay covered by a crust of

passes very close to Ra’s Al Khaymah, whence if it
were an active source the risk implications would be
very serious. Assigning activity to the fault is more
difficult because there is no instrumental seismicity
that appears to be directly associated with this
structure, and the historical record for the Emirates
is almost null because of sparse population and the
absence of important towns and cities where seismic
damage could have been recorded. Instead, the fault
is assumed to behave as a characteristic earthquake
source and the slip rate is estimated indirectly from
the maximum rate that could pass undetected from
halite (salt). These deposits were formed by post-
glacial flooding between 10 and 15 Ma ago, so it is
conservatively assumed that they are 10 Ma old. The
map of Brown (1972) is at a scale of 1:4 000 000 and
it was assumed that any offset in the contours
resulting from accumulated slip on the fault would
be discernible if at least 1 mm in length on the map,
implying a total slip of 4 km and a slip rate of
0.4 mm/year. Additional constraint on the slip rate
could be inferred from the GPS measurements from
two stations in Oman presented by Vernant et al.
(2004); if one makes the very conservative

Figure 16. Hazard curves for Dubai, in terms of PGA and 1-second spectral acceleration, with the seismic sources considered
in this study (thick black line) and including the West Coast Fault as an active source (thin grey line) with a slip rate of
0.4 mm/year.
 Georisk
Figure 17. Uniform hazard spectra for rock sites in Dubai at three different return periods as produced by this study (thick
black line) and as modified by the inclusion of the West Coast Fault as an active fault with a slip rate of 0.4 mm/year (thin
lines).
assumption that all of the relative displacement is
taken up by the WCF, this would yield a slip rate of
2.06 mm/year, but most of this displacement is
actually owing to the rotational behaviour of the
Downloaded At: 05:44 1 November 2010
Arabian plate and any remaining displacements are
probably accommodated by the Dibba Line. For the
maximum magnitude, the empirical relationship of
Wells and Coppersmith (1994) for strike-slip faults
would suggest a value of Mw 8, but such an event
seems very unlikely in view of the lack of discernible
offset. Therefore, a value of 7.090.5 was assumed;
as the same moment rate is assumed, this may be
considered a conservative assumption as the char-
acteristic event therefore has a much shorter recur-
rence interval.
Adopting the slip rate of 0.4 mm/year, the
hazard calculations were re-run, and the mean
hazard curves for Dubai, in terms of two ground-
motion parameters, are shown in Figure 16. The
inclusion of the WCF increases the hazard for
annual exceedance frequencies below 10 3 but
even at 10 6 the increase in the ground-motion
amplitude is less than a factor of two. This is
confirmed in Figure 17, which compares the UHS
for Dubai at three return periods with and without
the contribution from this source. At the return
periods that would normally govern the engineering
design of non-critical structures (i.e., 500 and 2500
years), the increase in the spectral ordinates is
modest. To obtain UHS at all three sites that
matched the UBC97 zone 1 spectrum would require
a slip rate on the fault of 2.5 mm/year, and to
produce a 475-year PGA for Dubai that would
match that obtained by Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai
(2006), a slip rate on the fault of 6.0 mm/year would
be required.
25
Conclusions
This paper presents a new probabilistic assessment of
seismic hazard, in terms of ground motions in rock,
for three cities in the United Arab Emirates. The
study has been performed within a logic-tree frame-
work to account for uncertainties in the models for
seismic sources and ground-motion prediction. The
results support the conclusions of several previous
studies that the hazard levels in the UAE are low and
that for structures of normal occupancy seismic
design should not be required, except perhaps in
more northerly areas such as Ra’s Al Khaymah. The
three published studies that suggest much higher
hazard levels in the Emirates can be discounted: the
GSHAP map has no technical basis in the UAE;
Abdalla and Al-Homoud (2004) use an inappropriate
and unjustifiable source zonation that spreads seis-
micity associated with the Zagros to the UAE; and
Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006) obtain higher
hazard estimates largely as a result of including as a
seismic source a major active fault running along the
western coast of the UAE. The seismic potential of
this source is not supported by instrumental, histor-
ical or paleoseismic evidence, and its inclusion in
PSHA calculations is difficult to justify. However, a
definitive seismic hazard study for the UAE should
include a thorough examination of this inferred
structure, using at least geomorphic indicators and,
if necessary, paleoseismological investigations as well.
If this inferred geological fault were shown to exist
and a degree of activity were proven, the implications
would be serious and seismic design considerations
could then become warranted. However, to include it
as a seismic source in PSHA calculations on the basis
of existing evidence is excessively conservative
although Sigbjörnsson and Elnashai (2006) actually
 26 G. Aldama-Bustos et al.
state that ‘‘as limited information is currently available
on the seismic activity of these faults, it is possible that
the current study has underestimated their impor-
tance’’; our suspicion is the opposite, i.e., that the
importance of the Dibba fault and the fault along the
UAE coast has been exaggerated.
The hazard calculations and disaggregations pre-
sented in this study demonstrate that the hazard is
actually dominated by the sparse local seismicity,
particularly at longer return periods. It is important
to bear in mind, however, that the study has not
considered the effect of surface soil deposits, which
could significantly amplify long-period motions gen-
erated by large-magnitude, distant earthquakes in the
Zagros and Makran regions, which in turn could
affect the high-rise structures dominating the skyline
of Dubai. Therefore, the conclusions of the current
study should not be treated as definitive and before a
final decision can be made regarding whether or not
seismic design considerations are required in Dubai,
in particular, site response studies considering local
soil effects should be performed.
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Acknowledgements
Our thanks to Dr Dirk Hollnack of Munich Re for bringing
to our attention reports of recent seismic activity in and
around the UAE, and also for encouragement in producing
this study. We are also grateful to Dr Matthew Free of
Arup Geotechnics for providing a copy of the recent
University of Sharjah seismic hazard study for the Emi-
rates. The paper was significantly improved by two
insightful and constructive reviews and we express our
gratitude to the anonymous referees for their very helpful
comments on the manuscript. Peter Stafford is a Fellow of
the Willis Research Network and that support is gratefully
acknowledged.
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