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Updating the National Seismic Hazard Assessment. Philosophy and Implications

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Dam owners and operators must consider a range of hazards for the design and maintenance of infrastructure assets – including seismic hazards. In 2018, Geoscience Australia completed its National Seismic Hazard Assessment (the NSHA). This assessment used best-practice probabilistic approaches and resulted in considerably lower hazard estimates than previously considered applicable for Australia. This assessment, and subsequent site-specific assessments conducted on behalf of the dam industry have yielded divergent estimates in hazard. This has caused confusion and concern amongst the dam engineering community. Herein, we unpack the rationale for these large discrepancies, and identify best practices for the treatment of earthquake catalogues when undertaking probabilistic seismic hazard assessments for extreme-consequence facilities. A short summary of the 2023 update to the NSHA is also provided.

Presented at the 2023 Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD) Conference

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Field Value
Title Updating the National Seismic Hazard Assessment. Philosophy and Implications
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/dbf6e20a-1469-4f5a-99cb-a6835daa8dcb
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Updating the National Seismic Hazard Assessment. Philosophy and Implications". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/updating-the-national-seismic-hazard-assessment-philosophy-and-implications