Probabilistic modeling of the earthquakes that affect the city of Cumaná, Venezuela Modelado probabilístico de los sismos que afectan a la ciudad de Cumaná, Venezuela

Abstract

In this research, based on a set of data on earthquakes that have impacted the city of Cumaná, Venezuela, a probabilistic modeling is carried out to determine the seismogenic zones that affect this city. Extreme value statistics are used to study data series that exceed a certain threshold. These series are contained in a catalog taken from a previous research derived from the instrumental records of the Seismology Center of the University of Oriente, the Venezuelan Foundation for Scientific Research (FUNVISIS), the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The data were divided according to their focal depth; then, using the seismic density, the geology and the occurrence of historical earthquakes, the seismogenic zones were identified and using the Gutenberg-Ritcher recurrence law, the parameters necessary to obtain the associated density and probability distribution functions were estimated.