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Site Effects and Soil-Structure Resonance Study in Santo Domingo (East) and Santiago De Los Caballeros (Dominican Republic) Using Microtremors and Active Seismic Sources

Description: 

The Dominican Republic has high seismicity, due to the position of the Hispaniola Island, right in the interaction between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. More specifically, on the northern edge of the Caribbean plate, where seismicity is especially intense, causing the entire island to be affected by a high seismic hazard. In this tectonic context, a seismic data acquisition campaign has been carried out in several cities of the Dominican Republic to determine site effects and to carry out seismic microzonation studies. These studies have been carried out within the framework of the research projects MICROSIS-I (seismic microzoning in urban areas of the Dominican Republic, based on active and passive seismic) and “KUK ÀHPÁN: Integrated Regional Study of Structure and Evolution 4D of the Lithosphere in Central America”. Implications in the Calculation of Seismic Hazard and Risk”).

In the present study, a campaign of urban noise recordings processed with the horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) spectral ratio and the spatial autocorrelation (SPAC) methods was carried out, in order to extract valuable information about the fundamental frequency peaks and geological shallow structure Vs30 and the bedrock interface under the investigated urban areas of Santo Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros.

Investigations were performed on a 10×10 km dense grid with two broad band 120s seismic stations, five three components short period seismic stations of 1 Hz and 36 single channel seismic stations provided with 4.5 Hz vertical component seismometers.

In addition of those studies, a Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) experiment of some 40 km has been carried out with a land streamer of 16 three component 4.5 Hz geophones and an active source of surface waves providing Rayleigh and Love waves along de main geological structures identified in both studied cities. The computed H/V curves suggest the existence of multiple interfaces within the geological structure of both cities. The observed resonance peaks were interpreted according with the available geological information.

Session: Site-specific Modeling of Seismic Ground Response: Are We Quantitative Enough to Predict? [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/19/2023

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Diego Cordoba

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors